DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, says the DOJ is pushing “a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.”

I'm honestly curious how this would "harm Americans".

Google pretending they have any other nationality other then “the global internet” is cute in a disgusting way.
That statement is technically true.

The billionaire owners are Americans.
- Everyone really does need to have that at the forefront of their mind. When the C-suit, wall street, and politicians talk about "Americans" they aren't talking about us schlubs.
- The corporations are people too!
Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer sounds like Donald Trump
- I fear this is exactly who they're courting.
The same ruling would ban Google from paying other browsers to make Google the default search engine.
This would kill Firefox and make Chromium the only browser engine that's left.
How does chrome make money? It uses ads from Google, chrome on it's own is not a business.

Say you buy chrome, you have to options

Ads built into chrome itself (when you're in the settings menu, homepage, reading a PDF, playing the dino game)

Force your own default search engine, or get a company like Google or Bing to pay you for the privilege of being a default search engine.

Neither of these options are better than the status quo

This is the last antitrust win we'll get for years, isn't it?

I know Trump doesn't like Big Tech, but I doubt his admin will punish them meaningfully, but just rail about censorship.

This isn't a win I think. They are yet to meet in the court with Google.

The DOJ will file a revised version of its proposals in early March, before the government and Google return to the DC District Court in April for a two-week remedies trial.
- Microshit treatment incoming IMHO
  
  People larp these headlines too much

Ehh just fight it for a month pay king trump some money and bam their golden.

This is exactly what will happen. Same thing with Albertsons and Kroger too.
- Okay but consider them taking this moment to let Elon buy it and using it to control information on the clients end 💀

If they're allowed to choose who they sell it to this won't change anything

I think they should sell it to me.
- 4 $ Final Offer
Sell it to Mozilla so they can make it uninstall itself and install Firefox instead in the next update

Just...please for the love of whatever dirty do Microsoft. Fucking sick of their shit recently with One Drive.

Do you have a few minutes to learn about our lord and savior Linux?
- Man the Linux propaganda is STRONG on Lemmy. I'll say what I've said before: I use my computer for gaming, web browsing, and managing a media server for my family that hosts pictures and other things. If those 3 things can be done easily without issue on a Linux distro without having to fuck around with configs every time I want to do something, I'm all in. By what I've heard though it's just not there yet. I am super happy Steam decided to go Linux for their Steamdeck though as I've heard thats helped make monumental strides the right direction. Trust me, I want to. Large part of it is I worked tech support for over a decade and having to troubleshoot my own shit is like the furthest thing I want to deal with haha
All mega corps but it won't happen
Microsoft is waaay easier to avoid than fucking google. Is one drive that annoying?

sell it to Microsoft so they can finally have a web browser that people use

Never again
- Imagine where the software industry would be without all the lost productivity because of MSIE quirks.
Microsoft run Chrome clone? But they already have Edge

Step 1: Buy Chome

Step 2: End development

Step 3: ???

Step 4: ~~Profit?~~ Non-Profit Firefox?

They should force it to become a worker cooperative. It's the only solution that doesn't allow for corruption

brOURser comrade.
Nationalize?
- Yep, nationalize everything that's essential or at least offer a nationalized alternative and let the private sector try to compete.
- For a lot of things yes.
  
  However I do not want to use a browser developed by the US gov tyvm

People wondering what Chrome has to do with a search monopoly:

The obvious benefit is that they can default the user's search provider to Google.

But the more nefarious benefit is that, by controlling both the client and server, they can unilaterally decide the future of web standards. They don't have to advocate for proposals, gain consensus, and limit themselves to well-supported standards the way other companies do. They can just do it, gain the first-mover advantage, and force others to follow suit.

If they don't like HTTP/2, they can invent their own protocol and implement it for their search servers and Chrome. Suddenly, using Chrome with Google Search is way faster than using Chrome with Bing or using Firefox with Google Search. Even if Microsoft and Mozilla don't like the protocol, they now have to adopt it or fall behind.

This has happened. QUIC was deployed in 2012. Firefox gained support in 2021.

They're doing the same thing with Privacy Sandbox, and you can also look at browser feature compatibility tables to see how eager Google is to force their own interpretation of every not-yet-finalized web standard as the canonical interpretation.

Edit: Also, JPEG XL vs. WebP.

Hot take: they sell Chrome but keep Chromium.

Seeing how tech illiterate some of these people are, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what ends up happening
How would that work exactly? Google would sell Chrome but keep paying teams if developers to work on Chromium?
- Basically. I mean look at Edge, it’s running Chromium under the hood, but the UI is developed by Microsoft.

There's literally so much else they should do, google docs, sheets, drive, phones, maps, earth, calendar, play store, translate, etc.
Good work, continue please.

What is the issue with docs, sheets, drive, phones, calendar, play store?

There seems to be plenty of options in all of these spaces. Play store isn't even on a lot of android devices.
- Correct. My example for another necessary intervention would be YouTube. That's a space in which Google does have a monopoly.

Sounds like they are preparing for this by killing off ChromeOS

https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-3500661/

Another thing to add to the google graveyard.

Who would buy this and how would they monetize it? In browser ads? A freemium paid model to remove the ads?

I'll bid $3.50 just to GPL it.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

Big doubt anything actually happens.

Is the DOJ the only working system in the US now?

The Reuters article suggests prohibiting payments to Apple so that Chrome users on their hardware default to Google search. What about default settings to Firefox? Similar agreements finance a large portion of Mozilla's revenue.

Admittedly, I don't know enough about monopolies and antitrust laws to know how much this matters. Can someone ELI5 this and give us more info?

Yeah, see all this stuff happening between now and inauguration day. See, we did something. Too little, too late. If there are ever free and fair elections in this country, and the Democrats return to power, they better get their fucking shit together. The dismantling of the Federal government will be almost impossible to reverse.

>sell Chrome to open search monopoly

>Chrome isn't a search engine but a web browser

Yeah, Google pays other companies lots of money to have its search engine enabled by default. That's what the lawsuit argued, so I'm not sure how separating chrome from the company will change that...
- It has massive market share and uses Google search by default. If another company owns the browser, they'll likely change the default search engine, and since almost nobody changes the defaults, it'll eat away at Google's marketshare.
  
  For example, Microsoft would be pretty interested in buying it to promote Bing search. Edge is already based on Chromium, so they could reuse their existing teams to offer support for it.

Hey look, some boomers who don't understand tech are trying to do a thing with a tech company. Sell Chrome? What a stupid idea.

Found the Google investor.
I'm afraid that this is a terrible take. There is nothing to stop them from making it into a separate company. It would break the monopoly because the same people making the browser won't be the ones earning the ad revenue.
- How does Chrome the company make money?

What the what?

"sell your browser, that'll limit your search monopoly"

. . . HAH?

It has 67% market share, and the default search is Google.
- So it is on firefox as well . . ? And also with Edge, for those poor bastards.
  
  Why not just force them to pick a different default? Or something meaningful like splitting them out of Alphabet entirely? Or stop sucking? Okay, well that last one may be hard to administrate.

What does Chrome have to do with search? 🤔

Google is the default search engine for chrome, and chrome is the single most popular browser at about 95% market share.
- Um, that wouldn't change if Google "sells Chrome", though.
  
  Firefox uses Google Search as a default, so does every Samsung phone (and most other Android devices).
  
  Unless the DOJ is telling everyone not to implement a default search engine (and let the user decide upon first opening the browser), then who owns Chrome really doesn't change much.
  
  Other remedies the government is asking the court to impose include prohibiting Google from offering money or anything of value to third parties — including Apple and other phone-makers — to make Google’s search engine the default,
  
  This is the only thing that makes sense, but "sell Chrome" is a laughable request.
What search engine does Chrome, by far and away the most used browser be it on phone or PC, use?