Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
344 comments
·March 15, 2025thomassmith65
beeflet
The 'what is good for the web is good for Google' line certainly was true in 2005 when the greatest threat to the web was companies like microsoft using internet explorer to adjust the de-facto web standards and privatize it in the "EEE" fashion.
Obviously the most visited websites would maintain the web better than OS vendors, their buisness depended on it being open.
We have a similar situation now, but with google locking down the most common browser (Manifest v3) and using extensions of web standards to maintain a dominant position.
Disclaimer: I am a zoomer and not a web developer so my history may be off here.
Voultapher
Let's not forget their attempt to push web attestation through WEI https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...
megadata
Attempt? Isn't that project still in full swing?
charcircuit
Malicous bots are a serious issue that trouble site operators. Trying to come up with solutions to such problems doesn't mean they don't care about the web. If it allows web sites to spend less time moderating and users to spend less time reading spam that would be a win win for both parties.
hkt
Re: your first paragraph, this is exactly what Google does now. They maintain such an incredible pace of development and such a unilateral attitude that nobody can stop them from developing web standards even if they want to. When was the last time anyone said no to a Chrome feature and expected it everywhere else? Developers treat it as the go to to the extent that some don't even bother testing in other browsers. Google are showing Microsoft how it is done.
OccamsMirror
It makes you wonder if Microsoft had given developers what they wanted, i.e. modern CSS and Javascript support, more browser features, etc., would they have actually moved off of Internet Explorer?
lkjdsklf
It’s kind of the new Internet Explorer.
It doesn’t matter what the standard is. It has to work in chrome because of its market saturation.
That makes chrome the standard regardless of what any standards body says
mohamedattahri
There’s a long, long list of APIs which are Chromium-only because Apple and/or Firefox rejected them: Bluetooth, Battery Status, etc.
iav
Mobile Safari exists though. Chrome is #2 on iOS and that’s where the most valuable consumers are
danaris
> The 'what is good for the web is good for Google' line certainly was true in 2005
...But even then, it did not follow that "what is good for Google is good for the web".
Just because 2005!Google does something that improves its situation doesn't mean that's automatically good for all of us, even if stuff that improves the web for all of us makes 2005!Google's situation better as a side effect.
And 2025!Google is definitely not in that position. At this point, what's good for the web is only good for Google if it fits with Google's own plans and enhances their control.
int_19h
And that whole "war on cookies" where they keep pitching replacements that basically let Google (and only Google) do all the same things, so that they can then gatekeep it and pay others for the privilege of accessing some limited subset of that data.
Regardless of why Google made Chrome originally, today, the main reason why it exists is to enable Google to track users more efficiently. And that is a bad thing.
mrkramer
They will never be able to kill cookies unless they bribe the whole industry and make them believe Google's cookie replacement technology will bring them more ad money.
Tbh cookies are lesser evil than Google's make believe cookie replacement technology. And remember Google is not Netscape, Google is on whole another level of power and domination.
Gud
What do you mean? the whole industry are happy to be on Chrome. What Google does, the rest will be either praising or be doing begrudingly.
A few of us are using Firefox. The few who remember the terror that web development was when Microsoft had the monopoly. At least they were mostly ignorant, not outright hostile towards the open web.
msmshazan
Kinda ironic that "Don't be evil" is Google's former motto
joquarky
That was before they were absorbed by Doubleclick.
wordpad
Why is tracking a bad thing? It allows better monetization of the web which is good for everyone.
pjerem
> It allows better monetization of the web which is good for everyone.
It’s not true but let me explain :
« Free » (like in free beer) web is :
- Good when it’s really free (like, people sharing things because they are nice, free software…)
- Not good when there is a business behind.
I have nothing against businesses. I love throwing my money at a lot of them. But I hate when I’m their product.
The master stroke of Google, Facebook and others have been to let the entire world think we are entitled to free things. It’s not true, you always somehow pay, if not with your money, then it means you are the money.
dzikimarian
It's not. It enables free content, but most of it is crap quality.
Assume there's no ad network that tells you that user is into high-end bikes. You cannot produce cheap rage bait and then market bikes, because you'll likely miss your target audience. You have to produce good biking content and then advertise bikes to be effective.
This is basically "break for our sponsor" you see on YouTube - for me personally youtube sponsorships are way more bearable than typical ad infested "news" site
travisgriggs
Was tempted to downvote. But hey, we’re supposed to talk about things.
Do you support the abstract argument that
________ allows better monetization of _________ which is good for everyone.
??
If so, we can agree to disagree. If however, “it depends”, I think you need to clarify why your proposition is true where other variants (e.g. “Indentured servitude allows better monetization of the lower classes which is good for everyone”) are very clearly not so.
wruza
It’s bad at least because people don’t like to be watched or stalked, even if no “real” harm accompanied. Privacy is a thing that most people agree should exist. You can’t always have it, but it doesn’t mean you have to surrender it either. That is, in an ideal world.
It allows better monetization of the web which is good for everyone.
In the real world, targeted ads initially promised to be related to user’s interests but never kept that. You don’t see what’s interesting for you, only what was paid a lot of money for, by people who find your parameters most suitable for their bait, blanket style. Users get heavily underserved their ads and mostly see generic money grab bs instead, cause money ranks better than interests and google is no socialist despite so much pretending.
user3939382
Care to post your browsing history from the last week? Please include private tabs.
asyx
Only if you believe that the current mode we are in is good.
tcfhgj
It's bad for everyone, considering how it increases prices and boosts consumption
cookiengineer
Because tracking is inherently an anti democratic thing.
See pretty much every lesson in history ever, from the Schutzstaffel of the Nazis, to worker unions being doxxed, to lobbyism.
Our democracy relies on private information being secret, and any one sided party having that information is able to rule over the other.
There's a reason why Putin is so successful when utilizing his FSB and SVR apparatus.
The "i don't have anything to hide" reasoning is bullshit, because you didn't post your email addresses password publicly for everyone to see. Therefore, your reasoning is based on the assumption that you misinterpret what everyone vs some party you inherently trust means.
Look at US politics, where 50% of the population now regrets having shared their medical data with doctors, because the current administration decided to prosecute past visits to the gynecologist if a woman decided to not be pregnant. Something that was not illegal in the past is now illegal, therefore data in itself is incriminating by default.
matthewdgreen
Let’s not forget the “AI assistant”, which appears to lightly plagiarize the first three results on any topic, while adding some mistakes.
mixmastamyk
Nor WEI, which Ars Technica described as a "nightmare." The final solution to general purpose computing.
mdhb
Quoting from Wikipedia here:
The stated goal was for sites to be able to restrict access to human users instead of automated programs and "allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device".
Which on the surface seems like a legitimate use case I have to be honest.
keepamovin
This is an excellent analysis. Also, Google is actually a data business, building an AI, with a long time horizon view - and always has been. Larry's initial goal was to build the AI. Impressive tho they are, current AI products are mere ripples upon the surface compared to the deep currents of Google's long term plans.
Given that, I actually don't see much resistance from Google leadership to abc.xyz divesting itself of Chrome. In fact, it's probably on some level been "worked out" - with the DOJ pushing for a meaningful, and symbolically meaningful, concession that was already negotiated as something Google could agree to, and maybe even wanted.
Getting rid of Chrome could help them refocus their efforts, and unburden themselves from something that probably comes with a lot of issues. Cue the eventual press release, letter from the leadership, looking back on the decades of Chrome, and how they ultimate believe that a Browser should be owned by the web and the people itself, not by a company.
It could be a significant, meaningful and positive pivot for the company as it faces changing situations.
snowwrestler
Google does not want to get rid of Chrome because it is by far the best source of “signal” that they use for training their systems. For example Chrome browsing stream data is the largest signal used in ranking search results.
Google deprecated PageRank in large part because interlinking was a proxy for user interest, and now with Chrome they can measure user interest directly in real time.
keepamovin
Will signal like that remain important with AI?
metadat
> Panglossian
I had to look it up, but what a fantastic word which applies perfectly to this context:
"Panglossian" describes something or someone characterized by extreme and often naive optimism, especially in the face of adversity
Panglossian • \pan-GLAH-see-un\ • adjective. : marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds : excessively optimistic.
Example: Even the most Panglossian temperament would have had trouble finding the good in this situation.
Thank you!
Centigonal
It comes from a character named pangloss in Voltaire's Candide who takes the view that we must live in the best of all possible worlds.
Gud
Absolutely agree 100% with this. I would argue that Google is TERRIBLE for the web.
nerdjon
I think what they said is not technically wrong (excluding the "happens to be good for al of us part"). What is good for the health of the web really is good for Google, since they need the web to be sustainable.
But, the problem is the opposite is not true. What is good for Google is often bad for the web as a whole. The only reason it "Works" is because of their dominance.
jgalt212
> AMP, and the Ad-blocking prohibition are evidence of this.
That's the crux of the argument. I don't need any further evidence.
xigency
Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web. This piece seems to be looking at Google at large (and I think all of Alphabet would be better scope there).
Certainly this would be unpopular here but I would be all for aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done historically, including vertical integrations.
Right now tech is a strange feudal state with hundreds of thousands of small teams anchored to a few hydra-like super-corporations on a consuming destructive rampage. Somehow, with the most advanced computer and technological systems to ever be known by man, we're looking to increase working hours and cut benefits, for "profits" that are not quite realized by the labor class or the end users.
Gonna be interesting to see what happens. I know Wall Street will place their bets for what they want to happen right along side what's obviously going to shake out once the market becomes 'rational.'
Spooky23
The administration doesn’t give a shit about the web, and DOJ is a fully political entity. They’ll extort Google for whatever concession they want, and Chrome will remain.
g-b-r
They'll demand half of Google's rare earths deposits
tempodox
Or just the keys to total surveillance and suppression of web content they don't like.
libertine
Google would just need to buy many Trump coins on the next drop. If he ever got Russian money, that was a great opportunity for it.
dehrmann
Biden or Trump administration? This remedy was originally proposed under Biden's DOJ.
Spooky23
It’s still around and the admin continued it.
Biden’s DOJ was slooooooowly pursuing anti-trust more seriously. That’s not a Trump priority. So what’s the reason?
victorbjorklund
You are probably right.
whatwhaaaaat
[flagged]
Centigonal
Do you want to cite a source?
Spooky23
The constitution establishes that a core role of government is to provide for the general welfare of the people, and public health is part of that. I’m generally in favor with government efforts to combat misinformation.
I’m also fine with wartime propaganda within limits for similar reasons.
boxed
> Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web.
Because then Chrome would slowly rot since there's no one to fund development, leading us to WebKit being the only engine, as Firefox is also defunded. I don't see how that's better.
pmontra
The new owner of Chrome can sell it to the manufacturers of Android devices. Royalties.
They can even make it closed source or enforce a not for commerce license. That would make manufacturers choose between paying those royalties, installing Firefox, investing in their own browser (a fork of Chrome or their very own tech.) Some of them will pay royalties.
rishav_sharan
Why do you think so? Google can continue to contribute to chromium as they are doing now, alongwith other contributors like Microsoft
quinnirill
That’s assuming the divested Chrome would then proceed to lose its gigantic market share and thus the mind-boggling proceeds from defaulting to Google as the search engine. They might even be able to afford a bigger development team, if need be.
burnerthrow008
But what makes you think the DoJ allow Google to continue paying Chrome to have Google as default? Google is already not allowed to pay Apple to be default.
2OEH8eoCRo0
Why do browsers need to be free?
nerdix
As long as OS vendors are allowed to bundle browsers with their OS then any paid browsers is at a huge disadvantage. Most people are going to pay for a browser when their OS comes with a free one that is good enough. Thats how Microsoft killed Netscape Navigator.
pessimizer
> aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done historically, including vertical integrations.
Vertical integration was a huge part of what they went after historically, until a bunch of people "convinced" the US that the standard should be "consumer harm." The cool thing about consumer harm is that you can come up with any bullshit argument about how prices will go down and access and quality up in the future from some merger, and nobody can disprove it because it's a counterfactual (he said, she said.) And when prices go up, it's just <shrug>, who could have known?
I know what vertical integration is today, though. It's not a hypothetical, it's a selling point to investors. I can just tell you no. Any clear metrics or standards for antitrust action can't be tolerated. The goal is to force us to go on vibes. Then they say we have bad vibes.
Competition brings down prices. Laissez-faire leads to pseudo-Communism with royal families, courtiers, and technicians making up the top 10%, and everybody else gets to be a (debt) slave i.e. feudalism.
We should err towards breaking more things up than would be ideal, not less. If I make you divest from something, you sell it and get whatever future value out of it today. It's not a punishment according to SCOTUS when they're looking at TikTok (which is why they said the TikTok ban wasn't a bill of attainder.) We charter these companies, and they operate for our benefit, which is why we grant them limited liability and a whole bunch of other treats. What you divest is going to go to somebody just like you, but someone who is not financially entangled with you. The only reason you want to keep it all is to do things that I don't want you to do with it, I don't want you doing unproductive market manipulation, I want you to put that energy into competing.
crabmusket
> The only reason you want to keep it all is to do things that I don't want you to do with it
Surely, the reason you want to keep it is because owning and controlling thing A and thing B allows you to make more profit personally than being a controlling owner of thing A or thing B.
That said, I agree with your post and also think nations should err more on the side of breaking things up.
Concentrations of power distort markets and resist democratic control.
gtsop
> Somehow, with the most advanced computer and technological systems to ever be known by man, we're looking to increase working hours and cut benefits, for "profits" that are not quite realized by the labor class
Somehow?? This is capitalism 101. Not a "strange feudal state" nor anything else.
thfuran
I think google should be forced to divest AdSense.
fumufumu
[dead]
ohso4
> Users don’t pay for Chrome. There aren’t ads in Chrome. There is no direct business model for Chrome. Unlike Safari and Firefox, nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default.
They track you. There IS a business model for Chrome: monetizing user data.
fiddlerwoaroof
There isn’t a business model for a company whose product is just chrome, though. Unless it’s some kind of foundation or non-profit with a sufficient endowment to not need a business model.
I’m no fan of Google, but—unless people really want browser subscriptions—I don’t see how you can have a browser company today. They exist better as a byproduct of some other business model.
CaffeineLD50
Browsers aren't a product because massive companies give it away and destroy the market.
If any product was given away by massively rich companies there would be "no market" for it, because it was destroyed.
protimewaster
Massive companies give away operating systems, but there seems to still be a market for them, so I don't think this statement is universally true.
fiddlerwoaroof
Well, I for one don't want to pay $15/mo for my browser: I'm happy for it to be the complement of some company's product.
dave4420
Browsers shouldn’t be a product because any modern operating system that doesn’t come with a web browser is defective.
A browser is an operating system feature.
I mean, you can get alternative file manager programs. Pay for them, even. But most people will never bother.
snowwrestler
> There isn’t a business model for a company whose product is just chrome, though.
Yes there is, it is the same business model Chrome has now, but with overt pricing. In other words if you can understand why Chrome is valuable to Google now, then you can understand what Chrome-the-standalone-business would put a price tag on.
Google benefits from the data that Chrome collects. So Chrome-the-business would collect the same data and charge Google for it.
But it could also sell that data to other companies too. This would create competition which would lead to better pricing and more innovation. That is why it is a remedy for a monopoly.
The history of antitrust is full of stuff like this. Standard Oil used to own all the gas stations in the country. AT&T used to be the only company that sold telephones.
the_other
> There isn’t a business model for a company whose product is just chrome, though.
This isn’t relevant, from the perspective of the ruling.
It might be relevant from the perspective of Chrome-the-business and from Chrome-users’ perspectives.
burnerthrow008
It isn’t relevant that the thing you want to split off won’t be able to stand on its own two feet? Wouldn’t it be simpler to simply require Google to burn the source code?
And what is the point of the breakup if everyone (including consumers/users) is worse off? Is the point of government to make people better off, or just to maximize the number of paperclips produced?
danaris
If Chrome cannot succeed on its own, but under Google it is an oppressive force taking over the vast majority of web marketshare, that is a textbook case for antitrust action. That is Google using its dominance in one market (search, advertising) to expand into and dominate another market (web browsers).
If a hypothetical Chrome Corp. couldn't figure out how to use the exact same data Google is harvesting with the browser to at least move in the direction of profitability, then they're hypothetically idiots.
Jensson
> If a hypothetical Chrome Corp. couldn't figure out how to use the exact same data Google is harvesting with the browser to at least move in the direction of profitability, then they're hypothetically idiots.
Selling that data to the government and other corporations is user hostile though, and that is exactly what is going to happen when Google is forced to sell.
I can see why the government would love this though so it makes sense they pursue this hard now,
solardev
I really do want a browser subscription or purchase, so that its incentives are aligned with mine and not the advertisers'.
Paid browsers used to be common in the past, and ones like Netcaptor gave us tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, etc. Opera was great too. Netscape itself used to be paid at first. It was big companies like Microsoft and Google tyring to EEE the web by giving away free browsers that killed the thriving browser marketplace and led to monopolies like the ones we have now.
There very much can be a browser market and business model IF antitrust were actually enforced.
Divest that shit yesterday.
chneu
I would like to point out that your perception of what a browser can/should be is based on what Google has turned browsers into.
What a browser is in 2025 is vastly different from what anyone thought they would ever be. There are major, major issues with the way web engines/web browsers function today and much of those issues stem from Google's near monopoly on browsers.
There was a lot of very interesting and good discussion around this in some of the Mozilla/Firefox threads recently. Mostly about how browsers turned into something they were never meant to be, which has changed the way the internet works and how we interact with it.
amrocha
What do browsers do that they weren’t meant to?
The only thing that comes to mind is password management. But I would also argue that’s a boon for normal users and trust in the web.
tim333
I'm not sure I get tracked that much more by Google while using Chrome than using Firefox? I still google stuff there and don't bother with privacy things because honestly in ~30 years of using the web I've yet to find a reason to care about ad tracking.
inetknght
> nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default
And some people wonder how Chrome could ever make money if it were divested from Google...
andrewflnr
Would that be a better world than we have now, though, if Chrome was nominally separate from Google but still only exists because Google pays for it? It seems like the same thing with extra steps.
paulryanrogers
If Chrome cannot be owned by Google (nor Alphabet) then that is an important separation. It means Chrome could auction off the rights. Much as Firefox offers non-Google search in certain markets, which happened in the US at least once.
thewebguyd
I believe the default search payments are also part of the antitrust case, so likely those payments will also become illegal, also affecting Firefox and Apple/Safari.
phailhaus
Can you clarify? Does Chrome track you, or do websites track you using cookies stored in Chrome?
tgv
By their own admission, "not only does Google collect your name and email address, Google also collects your physical address, your exact location, your contacts, advertising data, product interaction, search, and browsing history." [1] And that's Chrome (a Safari wrapper at that moment) on iOS. You may assume they collect at least as much on platforms they own.
[1] https://techstartups.com/2021/03/18/google-finally-revealed-...
phailhaus
But Chrome is not "collecting" this information secretly. Users are voluntarily giving this information to associate with their Google account. Chrome "collects" your physical address because it gives you the option of saving what "Home" is to your account, and a lot of people like that feature, so they use it.
csande17
Why not both?
Chrome consistently pushes to make it easier for websites to track you -- by being the slowest browser to incorporate privacy protections like third-party cookie isolation, by eliminating extension APIs used by ad/tracker blockers, and by adding new features which expose more fingerprinting surface to websites. This disproportionately benefits Google because Google runs some of the largest web tracking networks (reCaptcha, Google Analytics, AdSense, etc). Even if Chrome was separate from Google, Google (along with other ad companies) could probably keep paying them to sabotage users' privacy.
Chrome also directly uploads a lot of data to Google. It's technically possible to use Chrome without syncing your browser history to your Google account, but a surprising number of people I know mysteriously managed to turn on sync without knowing it. Other Chrome data-collection initiatives, like Core Web Vitals, also provide a lot of value to Google's other businesses. Those are other products that Google could pay directly for.
snackernews
Is that a distinction without a difference from an end user perspective?
Chrome’s defaults are the main reason anybody is tracked by cross-site cookies any more, and that tracking massively and directly benefits Google’s business.
streptomycin
I don't get the negative comments here. It's pretty simple I think...
- Google is banned from paying Firefox to be the default search engine -> Firefox has way less money -> Firefox development massively slows
- Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome, rather than using it to indirectly profit from the web in general like Google does -> Chrome probably goes to shit and development massively slows
So what now? Safari is going to be the leading force moving the web forward? The Chromium forks that are doing basically no browser engine work are going to suddenly find billions of dollars to invest in hiring developers? Someone will buy a time machine and go 10 years into the future to get a version of Ladybird that is comparable to what we have today in Chrome/Firefox? Just because you guys hate Google doesn't make any of those scenarios remotely plausible. And if you hate Google, there are much better ways to punish it than this.
int_19h
"Development slows" is not necessarily a bad thing. E.g. quite a lot of people would love development to slow wrt Manifest v3. It would also mean that web standards are less of a moving target for browsers playing catch-up (like Firefox).
People can also pay for browsers. The only reason why this isn't feasible today is because it's hard to compete with the top-of-the-line stuff that megacorps offer for free - which they do precisely so they can maintain de facto control over web standards (or force the lack thereof in areas where this is advantageous). Lest we forget, many early web browsers were paid products (not just NN, but also Opera, for example), and Microsoft's original sin as a monopoly was offering IE for free, against which NN couldn't compete. But if Google is forced to ditch Chrome, and Microsoft is forced to ditch Edge...
knowriju
This is such a 'first-world' comment. A majority of the folks logging on the web in the developing and emerging world will be unable to afford paying any kind of subscription for their web browser over and above what they pay their ISPs for internet access.
int_19h
As someone from "the rest of the world" originally, don't worry about that. Piracy will take care of it, just as it does with all other non-free software.
gabruoy
Then unfortunately the internet will remain a luxury for people who aren’t able to afford the cost. The internet is a product, not a charity or human right.
Mindwipe
The development that slows will not be parts that allow monetisation. They have a rationale. They will be things like security that have no immediate bottom line impact.
guax
It's not like the open source engines won't be worked on. Or other companies who are not ad companies (apple, etc)
Browsers will not stop existing because google cannot make one. At worse google would donate to a non profit that keeps the engine and do the influencing under the rug.
klooney
> So what now? Safari is going to be the leading force moving the web forward?
Even Safari is massively subsidized by Google paying to be the default browser. If those billions go away, engineering investment will be cut.
stephenr
In a scenario where Google no longer control Chrome, I doubt Safari's budget is at risk, the company had nearly $400B in revenue in 2024.
Courtroom testimony implied that part of the reason Apple value(s/d) the deal with Google was a "peace deal" to prevent Google from doing what Google does and forcing Safari users on Google properties, to switch to Chrome.
Of all the browsers that would be affected by the loss of Google funding, Safari is least likely to be affected.
izacus
The 400B in revenue is there to be paid out to shareholders not to pay for browser development when not needed.
Apple only has a browser team because they need to keep up with parity for their OS.
mixmastamyk
Web browsers are probably complex enough at this point. Putting them on maintenance and letting new architectures fight it out might not be a bad outcome.
jauntywundrkind
Putting hopes in someone else making an entirely new standards and protocols based hypermedia sounds outlandish. Whose going to go on a decade long quest to build something amazing to give away, again?
I for one really tire of this spiritual vandalism masquerading as a hopeful pineing ask for a new beginning. The web rocks, is amazing. Sure there's some incidental complexity that's accrued, but the versatility & wide capability from a simple core are a glorious & powerful thing that I think only a fool wouldn't celebrate.
mixmastamyk
Silly, it’s already started. An obstacle would give impetus to new solutions,
stemlord
>moving the web forward
What constitutes "forward" to you
ripped_britches
Wasm? It may seem like it’s still just a browser but I’m very grateful that bad ass people have been working on it
riku_iki
> Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome, rather than using it to indirectly profit from the web in general like Google does -> Chrome probably goes to shit and development massively slows
I kinda believe Chromium is already complete enough, and government can take over it, and keep in running in maintenance mode (security fixes through possible bounties) with minimum expenses, and it will be great product: reliable, performant, secure and without corp-crap-tech.
dehrmann
> Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome
Who would this be and how would they turn a profit from it?
zakki
At least Safari has better privacy concern than Chrome. Let's see if Waterfox can substitute Firefox in the long run. I believe MS Edge will happily replace Chrome.
roca
How can Waterfox substitute for Firefox when 99% of the work that goes into Waterfox is actually done by Firefox developers?
Almost the same argument applies to Edge and Chrome.
keming
> Safari
This is a better answer than Waterfox or Edge. Like you said, at least Apple cares about privacy enough to defend it in court.
Waterfox is dependent on Mozilla, which admitted to selling its users’ data.
Edge is an answer just for Windows, and the primary benefit to MS is getting people to use Bing, to sell ads.
npodbielski
I started reading this article and was immediately hit how biased it seems, like in this meme 'leave multi-bilion dollar corporation alone'.
Unfortunetelly we are in the times when any split of any of those multi-bilion dollar corp would be greatly benefiting humanity as a whole. How many people are taking their profits really? Hundreds? Thousands maybe?
And that is it. What humanity have from existence of those? Like one thing?
Some may say that we will have an AI, self driving cars or androids pretty soon. But ask your friends, or neighbours, ordinary people that work in non-tech jobs what they need. I am 100% sure that any those things above will be not their first need.
Better heath care. Less work. More money. Less stress. Vacation to recuperate and relax. More time for hobbies. Just possibility to have relaxing walk in the woods without worry.
Does any of those companies work on any projects that will help suffice any of those needs? Author of an article mentions 'good of the web' because probably his livelihood is the web.
But regular person does not care if their banking application or Netflix app on TV dongle is written with latest CSS standards or with Jquery.
Till that point in our history all big empires fell because of buearacracy and stagnation caused by millions of people trying to retain status quo. Momentum of conquest was not enough suply enoug resources to feed the empire. With the tech giants this may be first time in history when one entity will rule the entire human population caused by sheer momentum of technical progression it is making.
Will this be a good thing? I am entirely sure it will not be.
bloppe
I'm not sure about having them "pretty soon", but what do you think AI, self driving cars and androids are for if not to alleviate people of work?
Better health care is a tough one, I'll give you that.
light_hue_1
That's funny.
As a disclaimer I work on AI research.
Oh yeah. Definitely when we have discussions with companies to get funding we totally talk about how we're going to save the poor worker from all of these horrible jobs.
There's one end goal. Get rid of people to increase profits for management and shareholders.
People generally do not want to be "alleviated" of work, a great euphemism for being unemployed.
There's far more funding in getting rid of people than increasing their productivity 2x.
bloppe
That's called the lump of labor fallacy.
Losing your job sucks. It could suck a lot less with stuff like UBI that distributes the right amount of the profits from increasingly concentrated automation. Maybe you think that's impossible in the US or wherever you're from. You might be right. The point is that whichever society figures out the right mix of policies to harness all the benefits of automation without turning 99% of their people into paupers is going to "win".
Georgelemental
> They made a browser to invest in the web itself
But that investment isn’t neutral. It’s oriented towards making the Web a better place for Google to make money—not a better place for users to avoid being tracked by Google. Chrome’s dominant position means Google can kill any new web feature that would help users, but hurt Google’s bottom line.
jauntywundrkind
There's such a strong strain of dark side energy aimed at Google. It just feels so unhinged to me though.
Blink-dev is an amazing mailing list of really good improvements being built intelligently, in well declared fashion, with lots of checks via standards bodies, fully open to discussion. There's very few places on the planet where such good work is so easy to see, and no where that it's so abundant. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev
What features has Google killed, do you think? How often has this been a problem, do you think? What other browsers have gone ahead, with Google holding out?
Google wants a competent capable successful healthy web. They want there to be an open, standards & protocols system out there, a connected rich hypermedia internet, because everything else humanity has done with computing is proprietary and trying to rely on someone else's platform is existentially hazardous.
000ooo000
>What features has Google killed, do you think? How often has this been a problem, do you think?
Unless you've been living under a rock, it's hard to miss manifest v2 vs v3.
jauntywundrkind
Agreed, that stings. Its extremely visible & painful. I want to believe there was some intent, to make extensions that weren't such an extreme hazard, so that the Google Web Store could be better. But it's obviously just a massive regression in user agency, and miserable, and directly undoes so much of the good that was the web.
I still think this is, like, the one example. Its a bloody awful one though.
OuterVale
> What features has Google killed, do you think?
JPEG-XL pops to mind.
arccy
it was never alive enough to be killed
youngtaff
Sure there are a lot of people on blink-dev building good thoughtful features
But there are also plenty of people at Google etc who are convinced that advertising is the only way to fund the web and so build features to support that e.g. maintaining 3rd-party cookies, FLEDGE / Flock / Topics (and the rest of the deceptively names Privacy Sandbox)
Advertising is a massive invasion into our personal lives and via ad networks actors (sometimes hostile) can get access to data they have no rights to
larme
> What features has Google killed, do you think? The problem is more like google can implement whatever feature they want and force it into web standard
> How often has this been a problem, do you think? very often
> What other browsers have gone ahead, with Google holding out? Google is holding out in a sense that no other people can implement a feature-complete browser. Google is killing the "open standard" web by make the standard impossible.
kweingar
I've brought this up before, but I never got a response and I'm really interested what people think the business case is here. I keep wondering what a buyer would actually value beyond Chrome's userbase. Chrome is just Chromium with Google integrations, similar to how Edge is Chromium with Microsoft integrations.
If a company acquires Chrome, they don't have many choices: re-establish Google integration deals (so the divestiture would be pointless), replace Google integrations with their own (becoming just another Chromium distro in a sea of Chromium distros), or just monetize the existing userbase.
A Chrome acquisition doesn't include unlimited control over Chromium. Chromium is open source, with contributions from many organizations (who retain the copyright to their contributed code). Google can only sell what it exclusively owns: the brand, infrastructure, signing keys, etc. The real force behind Chromium is having a critical mass of engineers all pushing in generally the same direction. You can't necessarily just buy that, especially when you wouldn't own exclusive rights. Any other company is free to poach engineers and fork the project.
Edited to add: if Microsoft sold VS Code to, say, Oracle... don't you think that another company would leap at the opportunity to fork the project? Would the userbase and the thin layer of closed-source Microsoft customizations really be worth that much?
blagie
Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine.
The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences are three-fold:
- Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for placement
- There can be no central directives to shove things like Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats
- Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge in its web offerings
In other words, if a business is split, the same economics work, but without all the shady, anti-trusty stuff. It's an independent company, without linked chains of corporate control.
I think it most serves Google's interests to set up a second nonprofit similar to Mozilla to manage this, perhaps with more of a consortium model. Whatever Google can sell Chrome for is less in its interests than maintaining that the new Chrome will not be used against Google the way Google used Chrome against competitors.... If DDG were to end up with ownership of Chrome and switch from Google Search to DDG, I think Google would be pretty unhappy, while DDG's market cap of 75M versus Google's of $2T -- 2000 times higher -- would even out a little bit.
One of the key points is that the EXACT SAME economics and business model can be evil and anti-trusty or good and fair depending on chains of control and collusion. If there is a colluding consortium (whether by backroom deals or by having related products in the same place), new competitors won't come in since they know they'll be crushed unfairly. Same economics without backroom deals, and you've got market competition.
burnerthrow008
> Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine.
How do you image that working? Google is already banned from paying Apple to be the default search engine, so why would they be allowed to pay Chrome?
asadotzler
They are no more already banned from that than they have already been forced to divest chrome. None of this is final.
knowriju
If Meta buys Chrome (which is a real possibility) why do you think they will not try to push similar stuff like ManifestV3 ?
asadotzler
Well, they won't be as effective given Google's absolute dominance in web properties and the reach of its surveillance advertising network. When Gmail or Docs mysteriously breaks in Firefox for 3 days peeling off 10M more Firefox users for Chrome, the web suffers. Meta won't be able to do nearly as much of that given their major effort is all in apps and barely on the web any more.
asyx
I truely believe there is none. There is literally nothing people would pay for. We got ourselves into a situation where browsers have become so complex that they need an incredible amount of resources to get developed but the only way to get any money with them is to either sell the data of your users or have partners that do that (Google paying Mozilla for being the Firefox default search engine).
I literally don’t see a way out of this mess. In fact if Chrome needs to be split off from google, google has no need to keep Firefox alive anymore. If they just stop paying for the search engine default, Mozilla loses 75% of their revenue.
apignotti
> Chromium is open source, with contributions from many organizations (who retain the copyright to their contributed code).
To contribute anything to Chromium or V8 you need to sign a CLA, afterwards there are very little rights you retain.
kweingar
The CLA just gives Google a license to use the code your contribute (and a license to any associated patents). You still own the copyright, and Google cannot sell the rights to your code.
dither8
Google would retain copyright to all of it's employees contributions to Chromium. Which I recall being 90%+ of contributions. The propsal PDF from justice.gov doesn't mention Chromium anywhere, so maybe Google will retain copyrights, but the sale would seem pointless if they do.
The real question is to what level Google continue investment in Chrome after the sale. Remember both Mozilla and Apple will also loose out on the search engine deal.
asadotzler
Copyrights do not mean much here except that Google could license that code differently at some point, though the previous licenses are irrevocable so the "sold" Chrome would be the new main line, and Google's 90% of a browser fork under a new license could do something else. They'd certainly have to do some work to get it to be a browser again though because the 10% they cannot arbitrarily re-license is scattered around the codebase and some of it in critical parts of the system.
glimshe
I find amazing that, in today's web, the inaner a point is, the firmer is its proponent's conviction. Today's Google is the opposite of what is good for the web; it's a business led by a McKinsey bean counter and his henchmen, people who destroyed one of the most innovative companies the world has ever known and turned into a cancer who will only stop taking a cut of everything we do when it kills its host, the Internet.
Okx
You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade.
So we’re going to force you sell your car.
To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google shouldn't be paying to be the default search engine, but that it shouldn't own both the browser and the search engine.
I think this harkens back to the anti-trust court case, United States v. Paramount Pictures, where the court ruled that the film studios cannot hold monopolies over the movie theatres, and that theatres must remain independent.
Similarly, browsers and search engines being independent is good for competition because the internet is too important to let a single company dictate how it is used.
the_other
> To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google shouldn't be paying to be the default search engine, but that it shouldn't own both the browser and the search engine.
If this is the real crux of the case, then is divesting Chrome going to negatively affect DuckDuckGo and Kagi?
My hunch is “no”, and also that search+browser isn’t the crux of the case. I think the real crux is Google owning browser+ad/surveillance-network.
asadotzler
It's the scale. You can do all kinds of integrations at tiny scale that are not permissible at grand scale. I can own my store and sell my own-brand products in it but if I own most of the stores and use that leverage to force other stores to sell my own-brand products, that's a concern for competition and an opportunity for anti-trust regulation to step in and attempt to fix things.
alexey-salmin
> I don't think this is an accurate anaology. It's more like, you own the vast majority of grocery stores, and you make lemonade, and you force all the other grocery stores to only sell your lemonade.
Yep. The rest of the article is equally disingenuous, desperately making up arguments and bad analogies.
wordofx
If Google wasn’t such a trash company and using chrome to drive more revenue by farming data and preventing adblocks then no one would have a problem with chrome.
vachina
You can always use Chromium or dozens of others viable Chromium derivatives.
Google at least gave you the option to do that.
koito17
> Google at least gave you the option ...
Not sure if Google voluntarily gave users the option. Google was forced to give users the option since Blink is a derivative of the LGPL-licensed WebKit, which is itself a derivative of the LGPL-licensed KHTML.
An argument can be made for open-sourcing the frontend of the browser. However, even the WebKit codebase has a test browser that runs on Windows (despite Safari dropping Windows support over a decade ago). This would have been present in the Blink codebase even if Google decided to keep the Chrome frontend proprietary. So people would still be able to embed "Chromium" into applications.
nerdix
Isn't most of the frontend open source? Chromium looks a lot like Chrome. I would say that they would be basically indistinguishable to the average user.
tim333
They aren't that bad. Out of the FAANG lot Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google they are probably the one I'm happiest with. Facebook have gone crazy with ads, Apple are expensive, Amazon and Netflix are pushy for money. Google on the other hand has provided me with a lot of services I use daily for 20 or so years without really bugging me or trying to screw me over. They are not preventing adblock, just forcing going from uBlock to uBlock lite. If Google is a trash company what is this heavenly company that does such stuff better?
vips7L
Google has happily provided you with those services because they are stealing your data and invading your privacy secretly behind your back for 20 years. Everything Google does is to steal more info about you.
It’s baffling that you’re unhappy with companies wanting you to pay for their product. Yes Netflix increases their prices and wants to prevent you from sharing your account, but they’re not scanning every single email you’ve ever received or making the web worse for everyone to collect more data about you.
arccy
Well the companies can either: sell your data, or take your money and still sell your data. Don't trust the ones that say they don't sell your data, it's only a matter of time until they get caught. Even Apple only cares as much as they need for marketing.
paddw
What's unclear is who the buyer is supposed to be? Chrome's entire monetization is centered around its synergy with Google's ad business. Cutting off Chrome is so much messier, than the obvious, (although I fear it would itself have bad repercussions) decision to force them to sell Youtube.
glenstein
Exactly, this is my question as well. I was just thinking about it and thought although it's kind of silly, Google paying them (the newly-divested ChromeCo) for search engine default status could be a primary source of revenue.
I'm actually kind of curious about that as an option. Right now the distortion that makes Google any 800 pound gorilla is their leveraging of Chrome to channel users into their various monetized ecosystems.
But there could conceivably be an interesting form of parity that comes from the browsers all depending on the same form of revenue, search engine placement. I haven't fully thought this through, so I welcome corrections. I suppose Google could quite easily give favorable treatment toward ChromeCo and effectively continue to flex its monopoly muscle. Google will need them just as much as before. I'm honestly just not sure.
thewebguyd
Yeah I don't quite understand either. Once you rip Google out of Chrome, it's just chromium, I don't think there's going to be a buyer interested in buying what they can already get and build themselves for free.
A more appropriate ruling would be just force Google to stop distributing Chrome, not sell it but kill it. There's already a myriad of chromium reskins, so that wouldn't change, and that's all chrome will become if someone else buys it. Make the precedent that owners of a search engine can't also have a browser.
I think just killing chrome would do more good than selling it off to become yet another sketchy chromium reskin with questionable privacy and crypto miners.
pessimizer
If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a social negative, let it die?
A billion or two dollars would fund development indefinitely. Don't sell it to anybody, make it a nonprofit with a fat trust. I'll say the same thing about Firefox: they got plenty of money from Google. They should have been able to save enough in ten or how ever many years to fund development for all eternity. Instead they paid it to themselves.
Jensson
> If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a social negative, let it die?
Its just going to get more user hostile, that is the point. Google has a reason not to sell that data, Chrome company does not.
BrenBarn
It's wild that the author points to all the Google people writing W3C specs as if that's a positive sign. I'm not quite pessimistic enough to say all those people are 100% corporate shills, but there's no reason to expect that the stuff that gets into the W3C via Google is somehow magically detached from Google's profit motives. Google's effect on web standards is largely just another form of icky "embrace and extend" shenanigans.
nerdix
The alternative is employees of OS vendors writing the specs. And they would intentionally drag their feet or even outright refuse to standardize features that encroached on native apps in order to maintain their walled gardens.
Apple did good things for the web with WebKit before iOS because it was in their interest to break the Windows desktop monopoly (and I'd argue that macOS has been a huge benefactor of Chrome taking down IE). They've been less than stellar post iOS now that they have a rent seeking business predicated on native apps locked away behind their app store.
000ooo000
Yeah, couldn't believe what I was reading. The author was already being charitable to Google, but that part was a big shot to their credibility.
Google is less a 'web business' than it is an 'advertising business', a 'surveillance business', and a 'finance business'.
Consequently, it is false that 'what is good for the web is good for Google'. AMP, and the Ad-blocking prohibition are evidence of this.