Note: Original report by Bloomberg, article by Reuters proxied by Neuters to bypass paywall.
They can just wait it out until it becomes the corpo-friendly Dept. of Injustice on Jan. 20th.
This seems like a sensible consumer protection to not let the ad company control the biggest web browser. I won’t hold my breath, but I’m glad they are trying something.
AWS should also be split from Amazon.
AWS is amazing’s money maker, they might as well just sell Amazon and keep AWS lol
Why force one company to sell off their browser? Shouldn’t MS have to sell Edge and Apple sell Safari?
Microsoft having IE/Edge as the default browser has already cost them in the past. I don’t think Apple faced anything with Safari.
The problem today with chrome is how prevalent it is and how that influences the main product of the internet (advertising), which happens to be Google’s mais product too. Apple can at least make the argument that they make their money with the hardware, not the browser.
Either way, I think all OS should at least give you a list of browsers on first use to choose from.
Right, I remember the MS/IE issue in the past. I never understood why Apple wasn’t held to the same scrutiny. They don’t have the corporate hold like Windows does, so maybe that was why.
So if Google has to sell off Chrome, what happens to Chromebooks? It runs on ChromeOS with Chrome being the main interface. Could Google not spin off Chrome as another company?
Either way, I think all OS should at least give you a list of browsers on first use to choose from.
I like this idea if only because it means I don’t have the default web browser hanging around only ever having been used to download another web browser.
apple has, on mobile.
Their overwhelming market share is probably the main problem.
I think this is something even Elon Musk could get behind.
Lit. It’s a good ask although it’s not clear what separation means here. Not going to hold my breath, the big corpos seem to usually win these kind of games.
Chrome is now owned by a company, owned by a company, owned by another company, that is owned by Google.
And even in the case where there is actual separation, and competition, it will only be temporary!
Why doesn’t this have sprint?
Sprint was not a splinter of ATT.
Thanks to this thread TIL it was one of the few serious competitors to ATTs monopoly.
Southern Pacific Communications and introduction of Sprint
Sprint also traces its roots back to the Southern Pacific Railroad (SPR), which was founded in the 1860s as a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Company (SPC). The company operated thousands of miles of track as well as telegraph wire that ran along those tracks. In the early 1970s, the company began looking for ways to use its existing communications lines for long-distance calling. This division of the business was named the Southern Pacific Communications Company. By the mid 1970s, SPC was beginning to take business away from AT&T, which held a monopoly at the time. A number of lawsuits between SPC and AT&T took place throughout the 1970s; the majority were decided in favor of increased competition.Prior attempts at offering long-distance voice services had not been approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), although a fax service (called SpeedFAX) was permitted..
In the mid-1970s, SPC held a contest to select a new name for the company. The winning entry was “SPRINT”, an acronym for “Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony”.
If they split Google, MS, Apple, Meta and Amazon all simultaneously, with some condition for the splinters to not merge back, and that contaminating the results of their allowed mergers, there may be good outcomes.
Or there may not. It’s about people, not laws, after all.
Chrome is now owned by a separate conpany with the same major stock holders.
It’s like they’re a company pretending to be another company, disguised as another company. Tropic Thunder all the way down.
Google will bribe trump and this’ll be undone immediately
Google is such a good company, one the best. Everybody says it. I was just talking to John Google the other day, and he tells me, no really he did, he tells me we’re going to do amazing things together. Oogles of googles. That’s what we’ll sell. Everybody will know about google by this time next year. It’s true.
You forgot the unrelated rant in the middle about toasters being too dark these days or some shit.
He also didn’t say his name three times in 10 seconds. Then sort of fade off and vaguely look off into the distance.
They said to me Donald, Donald, they said Donald, they do amazing things, real bigly things, my father, my father, said to me Donald, they do big things Google land. Really good things… Yeah… Big things…
I love to see professionals in action.
That’s craft(wo)manship right there.
And a series of words that sounds kinda like a complex sentence when you listen to it, but actually means nothing whatsoever
And he says to me… a very smart guy, Mark, he’s really doing… he’s really got to show… when he does things he really does them, you know, like he really does, very impressive, very modern
God damnit.
Username checks out
Oogles of googles
Google: furiously writing down cereal ideas
<Fellates microphone>
…I mean, you do you buddy.
But (s)he is doing the microphone!
That would be the logical thing according to common sense and probably according to pichai a few weeks ago, but trump just nominated an anti big tech and musk friend to the FCC. musk is behind almost everybody in ai and autonomous cars so he’ll definitely push to hamper all competitors.
Sure, we don’t know how far would they go or how long will musk keep having white house influence and I personally think breaking up google is now off the table, but I don’t think they will get off the hook too easily.
So surely a very big bribe.
I‘ve actually when something like this will happen. A few years ago German energy providers and distributors needed to split, because it gives you an unfair advantage if you own both. Whole companies were split in two. People working for years together would no longer work together. In the end consumer were much better off after the split. I feel the same way with internet browser. It is unfair if you own the infrastructure (Chrome, energy grid) and the services that run on it (YouTube, power plants).
The US did this to AT&T. It was broken up into dozens of “baby bells”. Then it gradually bought them all back up and now it’s as big as it ever was
Bell telephone. AT&T was one of the resulting companies.
Thats stupid of the US to not block the merges again then… :p
Well this process also spawned Verizon, so they do have legitimate competition now and that’s what matters to antitrust actions
Very true, but in due time verizon could also be bought. Hence fcc should technically block it, like the nvidia and arm merge.
Or microsoft and activision ( which was heavily contested ).
Both were heavily contested worldwide
Better hurry, Trump’s rubber stamp DOJ will kill this faster than a cop encountering a dog.
For the right price.
Rad. Do Microsoft next.
If you’re talking about edge browser, edge is chrome.
Ew. So if someone likes their girlfriend to tie them up and edge them, that means they enjoy a breach of privacy, and getting google involved?
Google does like to watch.
Again! Again!
If this happens, I’d be interested in seeing how this effects ChromeOS. I don’t use it but my mom does.
Also, if you’re confused as to why ChromeOS would be effected, while it’s based on Gentoo Linux, ChromeOS uses a modified version of Chrome as it’s Desktop Environment.
Yes I would like to know what that means for ChromeOS and Chromebooks. If the new “Chrome” company got ChromeOS also that would be huge. But if that is not a requirement Google could just put another Chromium browser in ChromeOS. They could also continue to sell Chromebooks but based on a ChromiumOS fork.
Its based on debian now :(
Depending on what version
According to Wikipedia, it’s still based on Gentoo, it just uses Debian for running Linux applications in Crostini.
Oh go figure, my bad :P
And whoever buys it won’t also have some kind of ulterior motive? Chrome isn’t likely to be a money-maker on its own. If it were, Firefox would have less trouble staying afloat. Anyone who buys Chrome most likely will have plans for it that are no more in the end-user’s best interest than Google’s.
It’s not about dispelling any ulterior motive. The idea of anti-monopoly enforcement actions is that if the “business ecosystem” is good and healthy, then other companies who don’t own Chrome will be able to compete with whoever owns Chrome, giving the consumer choice that people who like the free market say will reduce consumer exploitation. (If you can’t tell from my tone, I am dubious, at best, of this logic)
Yeah any company controlled by the rich will act immorally
We can at least make sure it’s multiple companies who will fight each other instead of one supreme leader megacorp
Google: Sure, we’ll sell it to anyone who pays off our Russian Govt fine.
What Lemmy client do you use?
I am asking because it caught my attention that you didn’t upvote your own comment.
Also, funny reference 😂
The Lemmy web client, same as Reddit, allows you to de-upvote your posts.
It feels weird to upvote your own post anyway and I don’t do so unless I am asking for help and want it seen more, urgently.That is so odd, if you dont think what you are saying is relevant or necessary why say it?
Your conscientiousness will be lost in a sea of others self importance, at least level the playing field and support yourself.
if you dont think what you are saying is relevant or necessary why say it?
If I worried about necessity, I would probably not have a Lemmy account.
level the playing field
I’m not playing dependent upon others, just upon my own ideals. I feel like an upvote needs to mean something. In my case, it means, I need more people to see it, for me.
In most cases, the feeling behind my posts/comments are: If someone sees it, good, have fun.Your own upvote on your own comment doesn’t mean anything, because every single comment starts with one upvote by default, not zero. All you’re doing is moving your comments below everyone else’s.
Your own upvote on your own comment doesn’t mean anything
Neither do words, or little magnetic particles lain down nicely on a polymer disc, until people decide they mean something.
I don’t think anybody decided that an upvote count of 1 means anything.
Sometimes I downvote my own comment just to add a little chaos.
I see you being Chaotic-Chaotic over here.
LoL they won’t, even if they buy it for 1 trillion dollar
It will never happen. But it would be a good thing for the openness of the web. More Firefox, less Chrome.
Yep.
Tech companies have extreme “Fuck You” money. They have learned a lot from the past two decades of Antitrust acts.
That politician is either going to quickly change their mind with some bribes, or watch their entire life disappear with an army of lawyers or paid off peers shutting them down.
Wouldn’t it put Firefox on a pickle? Say Chrome gets bought out of Google’s hands, would they still bother to pay half a billion to Firefox to stay as the default search engine? Could Firefox survive being financially independent?
I’d assume they would be willing to pay even more.
How do you force someone to sell something thats open source?
Can the government please force me to sell my open source software too? If they could be my sales department, I’d love that. Pretty please.
I don’t see how a “Chrome” company would make any money. Now if the Chrome Company also owned ChromeOS and Chromebooks that might be interesting. But it could also be bad, because such a company would probably want to take a cut of every Chromebook in order to actually make money.
Chromium is open source, Google bases their Chrome off of it, but Chrome is not open source.
OK but 98% of chrome is open source then? Who would buy it?
Chrome isn’t open source?
They shutting force then to stop the advertising branch too
What’s to stop them just making another browser?
What’s to stop them just making another browser?
Nothing. Chromium is open source. So they could just fork it and declare a new “official” google browser and it would be a lot like Chrome.
I’m not sure why the govt thinks forcing google to give up a particular fork/branch of an open source browser is all that meaningful. It might make more sense if Chrome was a closed source one of a kind browser.
I’ve worked in the aftermath of DoJ agreements like this one. The DoJ is not stupid (or at least didn’t used to be) and will have stipulations about removing Google employees from governance/write permissions to the project, with follow up check-ins every few months to make sure any shenanigans aren’t occurring.
…none of that matters though now that the DoJ is going to be dissolved.
They need to ban them from forking the browser. Google has the ability to get people to install the new Google totally-not-chrome browser. Especially if they keep Android as well.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. It also makes Chrome essentially worthless to anyone except Google.
Maybe as a whole package, but node.js servers are ubiquitous and have a ton of stakeholders that have nothing to do with web browsers.
What does Chrome have to do with a node.js server?
Same JS engine, same maintainers, same iron-grip control by Google.
Are you saying Google funds node.js development?
I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about here.
The JavaScript (code) engine that powers Chrome is the same JavaScript (code) engine that powers Node servers. Node is used to power a large portion of web applications and internal corporate tools. The Chromium/Node project is under the tight control of Google engineers.
With blackjack and hookers?
I’m 40% internet browser.
Potentially.
Not needed. Internet Explorer existed for years after the 90s. It wasn’t killed by the courts. It was killed by the fact that it’s only function was to install a better browser on first boot.
I think you are severely underestimating how many people don’t even understand the difference between windows, explorer, a web browser and even the Internet itself during the 90’s well into the 2000’s even 2010’s.
That’s who kept IE alive
No offense but it was the US Government. Most of their websites were coded for it, and quite a few of them didn’t work properly or reliably in other browsers as a result. This was true up until it was sunsetted and they were forced to update to Edge and some of the websites still haven’t been properly moved over to Chromium. When the pandemic hit and the Armed Forces had to setup remote work for thousands of people Microsoft basically built them a fork of Teams. The US Government is kind of running hand in hand with Microsoft on a lot of stuff if you just hazard a cursory look.
They didn’t make the first one! They got it from Apple, who themselves got it from KDE.
