They can't properly port the office to android today, imagine years ago, also office in cellphone were never great

> Pedantically, their resources were never combined. They independently tried to compete, and they independently failed.

I'm talking about Windows Subsystem for Android, which leveraged Amazon's app store.

Though honestly, their application strategy since Windows 8 has been fascinating. Watching them:

- ship Linux and Android app support

- replace their first-party browser with a Chrome derivative (and inherit all the PWA support of its parent)

- ship first-party support for .NET and PowerShell on other platforms

- ship React Native builds for Windows and macOS

...all suggest they're really trying not to get into the same hole as what happened with Metro, by giving you a lot of different ways to build something that can then run on modern versions of Windows -- regardless of whether that's even necessarily your goal.

microG doesn't pass all the integrity / attestation checks

even if you do not root your phone. and keep play services enabled, it'll get rejected by their moatware "play integrity" api. https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...

Netscape used to cost the equivalent of $100 inflation-adjusted dollars and was only forced to go free to compete with Internet Explorer. Now the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and anyone trying to sell you a browser would become irrelevant the same way Delphi's paid compiler lost out to free C compilers.

Maybe you could carve out a niche that's willing to pay, the same way C# did before dotnet core. But for a mass product the best-case scenario would be something similar to today's Opera.

However what it would do is open up the market to competition. Right now Google is spending a lot on Chrome development and Chrome advertisement. Opera and Edge both have given up on their own engines because they couldn't keep pace with Chrome development, and Firefox kept its engine but can't compete with Chrome's ad spend. If Chrome had to compete on a more even playing field there would be more room for diversity and competition. That could be a net positive, even if it makes Chrome worse.

> What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?

The new Chrome company will struggle for a year or two then Apple will try to buy it but lose out after Oracle submits a higher bid.

Firefox has made Mozilla billions over its lifetime by selling the default search engine rights to Yahoo and Google. Chrome, having a much greater user base, would demand a correspondingly higher fee (probably around $10b a year). Now, the other problem is there is no other search engine to compete with Google at that level, but that might change with independence of Chrome.

Browsers can be profitable, see Opera: https://investor.opera.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

But not everything must be for-profit. Free/Libre/Open Source Software is a prime example. Projects like GNU, Linux, GNOME, KDE, WebKitGTK, LibreOffice are sustainable for a long time.

> They are essential to build any modern system and applications. Yet, those are also (mostly) no longer self-funding products.

so, an utility.

create a (partially?) state-owned steward with a legislated mandate to develop the browser, self-funded via extra tax on digital goods and services.

Hypothetically, why would some buyer using Chrome's monopoly to establish a market advantage in an adjacent domain be different than Google using Chrome's monopoly to establish a market advantage in an adjacent domain?

> A better solution is to implement a bill

Not that I disagree with the overall point, but this is something the DOJ does not do. They would just look at the current laws and decide who to prosecute based on their interpretation of events.

Unless you own a Chromebook, if you have Chrome on your computer, you made a choice to download it. How would a browser choice screen help?

But now Bing would have a chance of becoming the default search engine of the most used browser in the world.

That's the difference.

Look at the effects of breaking up the bells into smaller companies....

Frankly, who cares. The important part is that google doesn't own a browser.

Google to Mozilla: "I'm gonna pay you 400M a year for antitrust to fuck off"

Seems like it didn't work though.

Whoever contributes to it controls Chromium.

If 90% of the contributors were non-Google, then it would effectively be controlled by non-Google, because they could fork it and their fork would still get 90% of development.

See Terraform for a live example.

The only reason Google "controls" Chromium is because Google funds almost, but not quite, 100% of its development.

On a similar note, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from investing equal or greater amounts and forking Chromium (well, arguably they might already have with Edge). Except that they're benefiting from all of Google's investment, for free. Why turn down a massive developer investment from your competitor with no strings attached?

So more or less what Mozilla was supposed to be all along?

Do you think Google will continue to invest money and resources into the development of Chromium if they were forced to sell Chrome? I don't. The first thing I would do is close source the Chromium project and work on a new closed source browser to compete with Chrome. I also don't see Chrome surviving when all of the Google/Chromium developers have left.

Google doesn't use Chrome data for Ads or Search. They're not allowed to based on the TOS, and also they have government regulators watching carefully to make sure they don't make a mistake like that.

Mozilla literally gets paid by Google, and not sure how you can quantify Safari as being profitable on its own when it's the default for all Apple products and realistically, the only browser on iOS.

> Safari is immensely profitable

The exact way Safari itself is immensely profitable is under scruity in this exact DOJ case!

In what way is Safari profitable? How is that even measured? Has any consumer in the last 10 years ever specifically paid for safari? Or do you mean the payments by google to be the default search engine?

Please provide proof that Firefox has "brought in tens of billions of revenue per year".

I'm not sure that software entirely obeys normal market theory. So much of it is zero-cost free.

The synergistic effects are so strong that most users would prefer there to be The System, in which everything works together and there's no risk of incompatible choices. They don't necessarily care which system.

The market in things like, say, file explorers is tiny. There's a few shell replacements (free), Midnight Commander and clones, and maybe over in the corner someone making a few thousand dollars a year from an Explorer replacement.

Well, things with open source alternatives tend to fare badly when sold.

From making Google the default search engine…

You might have missed recent news about Linux maintainers being kicked off for reasons having nothing to do with Linux. This will not work across "political borders" because psychologically we're all still cavemen in need of a tribe to stick to, and a group of "them" to hate on.

We can't even get the world's governments to agree on what basic human rights are.

It works out so well for the UN!

You can have country-specific nonprofits that cooperate; you can have consumer-rights nonprofits or free-speech nonprofits cooperating...

The best thing about open source is that cooperating on it is very easy.

That is your assumption.

Not really true...

In this specific case I'd be willing to bet that Firefox 3 probably doesn't handle current HTTPS/TLS standards and might not be able to browser the modern Internet at all (let alone display modern webpages, HTML5 video players, single-page web apps, WebRTC live calls, etc.)

It wasn't just the search that was amazing. You would go to google.com and be presented with only a Google logo, 1 line input box, and 2 buttons.

No portal, no news, no header, no login, no advertise with us, no punching monkeys.

It was a refreshingly different take on the web at the time.

That’s how I feel about Yandex lately. When it’s a struggle to find something on the common search engines, Yandex works like magic.

It’s not that Yandex is particularly better in any way, it just chooses to not filter the content one is looking for.

Yes but without Chrome, Google wouldn't have 90% search market share that they have today. They are completely dominating the WWW industry.

Google already funds Firefox and makes Chromium[0] as well, which seems like quite a lot of effort to go to as a single company in funding/enabling competition. Microsoft had to do far less to resolve their EU dispute: just give users other options for browsers on install of their OS.

[0] Unless if today you take Chromium and make your own browser, and it still has all the stuff in about logins and tracking.

>Chrome is only the default on Pixel devices...

WRONG

Before a couple of weeks ago where a Google Play Services update changed the first set-up process, almost all global (non-CN market) devices forced Chrome as default: Xiaomi, OnePlus, Realme, Motorola, Oukitel and whatever other weird brands there are left in the Android world. AKA anything other than Samsung

Many forks of Chromium, yes. Most if the rest of them pass the “open source” test but would struggle on the “browser” side.

Who pays for the development? Is the linux model viable for a browser?

Open source browsers are either bad and non-competitive, or they're Firefox and still get criticism for being in the pocket of Google.

Google already does sell Chrome to the enterprise at $6/user/month[1]. Disclosure: I work at Google.

[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/products/chrome-enterprise-p...

So the browser isn't open source then. Sounds like a net loss for the public good.

Surely? I can't imagine Chrome by itself is a very profitable company. Who knows.

That's unfalsifiable conjecture. I could just as easily assert that dang is building secret dossiers on all of us from our IP-request logs - we just can't see it

Yeah, I really wish there is a working option to make me see it, then.

I always enable every data collection option in my privacy page, because even if I don't they get the data anyway, so why bother?

I do see my entire Google Search history since 2006.

It sounds like that might be talking about the hyperlink `ping` param: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorE...

It could be marked as chrome because Firefox doesn’t support it (without a default-off config value) and Safari technically implemented it at a later date than Chrome, with non-chromium Edge supporting it years after chrome.

This would indicate Google is using chrome to tell it when (via its support of the ping property) but wouldn’t indicate they are decrypting and analyzing chrome sync data.

Why is Google obligated to maintain them? It's open source so other people can and should do so.

In terms of controlling commerce (google’s main line of business), non-mobile is on its way to becoming a rounding error.

> Apple does not run the largest advertising network on the planet.

No, but they're trying to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42185080

There's nothing inherently illegal about monopolies, just anti-competitive behavior. While Apple is engaging in clear anti-competitive behavior (eg shoving the app store down customers throats), they've reined in restrictions of competing browsers so that they're actually worth using now.

What do you call the Apple store then if it's not a monopolization of the iOS ecosystem?

This article accurately captures all tech monopolies, Apple included.

https://ia.net/topics/monopolies-apple-and-epic

Who is going to provide a competitive browser for the price of $0 other than Google?

They changed it to make it longer.its now “Dont Forget To Be Evil”

> Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable?

To me this option seems more practical. And we already have some precedence for this kind of solution.

For aviation we have entities like EASA issuing standards like ED-109 and for healthcare we have the HL7 organization issuing the HL7 standard. Another example in the healthcare industry is the DICOM standard created by the NEMA organization. This is not a new idea.

I'm not arguing this approach is without problems. But we are already doing this for some pretty important topics, and I don't see why we couldn't use the same strategy for an "open web standard" that all browsers have to implement.

Also I can't get weather information on Google with Firefox

The problem is not that it integrates well with google products, the problem is that they are preventing other products from integrating as well.

I tend to agree. I struggle to understand how a company runs a browser product without being eventually seen as a monopoly. They’re making a unique product ecosystem of browser and apps, just like everyone else, no need to keep coming down on whoever is successful at it. People can vote with their feet and use a dozen other options.

They didn't build it from the ground up

Chrome allows Google to control the web platform to benefit their Ads business.

Monopolies are bad for us. It's as simple as that really.

> It does feel a bit like being punished for success.

Nobody is being punished. Punishment would be like "you're going to prison because the thing you started turned into a monopoly". That's not what is happening. It's more like "whoops, you created a monopoly, time to reset, but you get to keep everything you reaped so far".

> 1) does it though? It seems like the Google-specific parts of it are pretty ancillary to the whole experience

You're unwittingly describing the textbook definition of anticompetitive practices only made possible by abusing a dominant position.

> 2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

Safari does not represent >65% of all web traffic. Also, there's the major liability of having a single ad company controlling the browser that the average internet user uses to browse the web.

> how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

It’s not, other than Google has a way larger market share (especially if you count Edge/Opera/Brave/etc.) and has been (ab)using that position to push web standards in a direction that favors their business and that other browser vendors have to follow to keep up.

If Safari had Chrome’s market share and was throwing their weight around like Google does and Microsoft did with IE, it’d be the same argument and I’d also personally support forcing them to divest it.

> how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

Apple hasn't been found to have a monopoly like Google has [1].

[1] https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-search-engine-ve...

2) consumers cannot use products like Safari as their exclusive web browser. The web has decided that Chrome is the only browser worth supporting and the world needs to keep Chrome at-the-ready for when the alternative browser eventually breaks.

For example, Chrome has replaced IE as the corporate browser, due to the integrations with Workspace accounts and Authentication mechanisms. In order to use the fingerID on my/employer's macbook pro, I have to give my employer root/sync access to Google Chrome.

> 2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

It's only different in the share of the overall market they hold - and it's notable that the EU has already acted to break Apple's monopoly over specifically the iOS browser market.

re: 1) logging into a Google domain in a chrome browser, logs the browser into the Google account [auto-profile-login] [gSignin], and by default, syncs browser history to the cloud, cloud-readable [gSync]. Google's own docs describe that you can add a passphrase "so Google can't read it". While Google can read it, they have an arguable duty to shareholders to read it.

- [auto-profile-login]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26200298

- [gSignin]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277

- [gSync]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?hl=en

> Keep your info private with a passphrase With a passphrase, you can use Google's cloud to store and sync your Chrome data without letting Google read it.

Thank you appealing to reasonable expectations, but Google, as their own docs make clear, ties uses together quite aggressively^W conveniently.

2) Whatabout Apple and Safari? Apple doesn't offer an email service supported in part by scanning email content for ads.

Apple has gone to some lengths to engineer a system where they can credibly(-ish) claim to "protect your privacy when you browse the web in Safari," [Apple private relay].

- [Apple private relay]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602

Google re-engineers their browser to prevent ad-blockers from working.

Much better privacy protection and ad blocking.

There's really no rational reason for third-party cookies to still exist. The only reason they're still around is because an advertising company's browser has like 97% market share.

Perhaps if chrome finally fails people will move to better things, like servo https://github.com/servo/servo.

It would be nice to have a completely open source browser that can be built with a simple one liner from cargo. Having several thousands of eyes on the code daily to check for telemetry violations, privacy issues, security, and performance daily in mostly a single language, small, and well structured browser repo would be phenomenal compared to the disjoint jumbled messes we have today.

Wouldn't consumer like it if they could use Google services on any browser with the same experience without having to give up other browsers? I use firefox mainly but I have to use Chrome when I use Google Meet because Google provide more features and better performance when you are on Chrome (intentionally, not because of other browsers limitations)

consumer benefit is not the end all of antitrust.

Innovation. Google has no competition and so has no incentive to innovate for consumer benefit.

More future competition and innovation.

Do we really still think operating systems shouldn't ship with browsers??

I thought that one had been retroactively deemed a pretty silly decision

I think the circumstances were quite different. MS was an entrenched player when they created IE/started monopolizing. Google was not an entrenched player. They rose to monopoly power.

There are lots of MSFTers who now work for Google. They just relocated from the Microsoft office in Palo Alto to the Google one down the road.

Same people = same mistakes.

Ah three decades ago, a year before Internet Explorer was released[0], and 7 months after Netscape was released[1], easy to correct in hindsight.

Two decades ago IE6 was already 3yo, Safari 1 was 1yo, and it would take 4 years for Chrome to drop[2].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

This is a good point. “Why should anyone think about monopolies when we could imagine what it would be like if they put nicotine in beefaroni?” is exactly the sort of salient and nuanced discourse that is sorely lacking these day’s

My read of this is based on an assumption that monopolies will always structure their business around being monopolies. This post is implying that there cases where there are not, and those are the only cases where antitrust law should be enforced. Based on this contradiction, as well as the odd phrasing, emphasizing how important making money is over resolving the badness of monopolies, I'm pretty sure this is a joke.

It's a distillation of the top level comment done in a sarcastic manner meant to indicate the dubious natute of the original claim.

I would assume they're being facetious.

Considering Chrome is just Chromium + a lil telemetry, forcing them to sell Chrome is akin to forcing them to sell consumer data. The Chromium bits are OSS, so the only proprietary and sellable bit is the user data really.

In google docs if you highlight some text and right click there are options for copy and paste. If you click them in chrome it works fine, if you click them in Firefox it says:

"These actions are unavailable using the Edit menus, but you can still use: Ctrl+C - for copy, Ctrl+X - for cut, Ctrl+V - for paste"

So for some reason some functions are just not present in other browsers. I can guarantee they could implement these functions if they wanted to.

Have you tried using Google Meet on Safari? You can’t use filters, blur the background, and basically all other features besides basic video and audio.

I have random loading issues when I try to play something on the YouTube shorts page. The audio would play but not the video. Refreshing the page sometimes fixed this

They keep firing large chunks of their employees due to not much cash, and the majority of their funding comes from google which it is phasing out over time.

It's market share has been slowly trending downward since forever

Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

20240701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791

https://github.com/servo/servo

Servo is upcoming, but so far it is fantastic in comparison to any other browser out there.

I tend to focus on any software that does not require 12 teams of people 6 weeks to determine how to build a single binary because of the use of 20 different programming languages and mixing and matching of paradigms and solutions to subconponents. I very much appreciate simplicity and look for highly secure and private programs that highly discourage JavaScript from ever being run.

Servo is finally a breath of fresh air in that regard.

Maybe Zen Browser as an alternative to Firefox.

The thing I keep coming back to is that everyone needs a job. So unless we all go to work for Google, things that help other companies help the employees of other companies.

They may think they are consumers, but most often they are the consumables.

Explain to me how there can be two roads occupying the same space? A road network is a natural monopoly.

Perhaps you're right, but this level of specificity is not usually something we find in primary legislation (AFAIK). Also, the DOJ may be motivated to act to a different extent than the two chambers of Congress. Still, it's always possible that this measure may end up not being effective.

The relevant market for them is smartphones and smartphone apps, and again, Apple doesn't have a monopoly there. Most markets have concentration effects and players that dominate the market to a certain degree, that doesn't automatically make them a monopolist, it depends on how they got there and what exactly they do to keep or build out their position in the market. By your definition Valve is a monopolist in the gaming market due to their size and dominance, but that's likely not true either.

Anticompetitive behavior would be if they used their power to make it more difficult for people to buy Android phones e.g. by entering into exclusivity deals with cell service providers or electronics stores so that you could only find Apple products there (i.e. T-Mobile would only sell iPhones with their contracts and you wouldn't find any Android phones except in some small speciality shops out of town). That's what Google is doing in its markets among other things, i.e. pay tons of money to ensure all virtual store fronts are only stocked with Google products and everything else is hidden behind.

Apple does of course show anti-competitive behavior to a degree, i.e. they purchase the entire production capacity of the most advanced semiconductor fabs to have exclusivity and preserve their edge, but again there are still other players in that market and competition still seems possible. If you want to compare that to what Google is doing in the search and ad space it would translate to them locking up almost all semiconductor suppliers in exclusivity contracts for 10 years so that no other company could ever build any advanced chips in large numbers.

> Apple has exclusive control over a market (AppStore)

Epic tried to make this case already, but the judge ruled that the App Store is not a market that Apple can have a monopoly over.

While those are big numbers, determining if a company has a monopoly requires looking at the numbers and market share of competing companies as well.

Yes, Apple has exclusive control over the Apple ecosystem. I'm sure a lot of Apple users would like greater control over their devices.

But the choice isn't between Apple and not having a phone. Android exists, and as long as its a viable choice, Apple isn't a monopoly.

The argument as to whether smartphones or the Apple App Store is the better definition of a market has been done to death at this point, right? IMO it would be more good faith to just reference the fact that this is a currently entrenched and impossible to reconcile matter of… opinion? Definition?

> If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.

This level of certainty is not warranted.

I think a lot of people aren't aware that monopolies are not illegal in the US. It is completely legal to run a business that is a monopoly.

What is illegal are anti-competitive practices that a business might employ in an attempt to create or maintain a monopoly. A business that violates these laws might already be a monopoly, or it might not be one.

Aston Martin doesn’t sell enough cars to be a problem for society. Apple has pretty high market share. I don’t really think they are a monopoly (because I can’t see the point of view that takes a single Apple Store as “the market”), but I think it is obvious that they have more impact than Aston Martin.

Apple monitor stand: $999

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MWUG2LL/A/pro-stand

Nobody needs an Aston Martin to perform well enough at their job. I've been in multiple situations where being a Linux user put me at a disadvantage because everything else at a company assumes Apple.

Granted, the appropriate response is to demand a Mac from this company, but it still highlights that a Mac isn't a luxury item the same way an Aston Martin is

Yes they are a monopoly on the MacOS hardware market, which explains this kind of extractive behavior.

Not if you work for a local council or whatever, and need to develop an iOS app for some reason.

Then you pay, because they basically force you to use their hardware, software, connectors, formats, billing services, etc every step of the way.

Apple has a monopoly on usable trackpads.

Apple today discontinued the lightning to 3.5mm converters, but I’m more referring to things like the apple exclusive airplay, proprietary Bluetooth codecs, etc

> based on the financials, it's probably going to go bankrupt pretty quick.

Stage 1: Buy Chrome from Google, with its 65% browser market share.

Stage 2: Tell Google you'll keep them as default search provider for $5 billion per year.

Stage 3: Profit

Yeah, probably not worth the money

If Google were forced to divest itself of Chrome and there were no takers then Chromium would take on an altogether different perspective. That Chromium exists shows there's already an existing infrastructure that would make transitioning to it relatively straightforward.

Incidentally, I don't use Chrome, only Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers.

Much as many are loathe to admit it decommercialization of huge swathes of the internet is, in fact, possible. People can make and share things without a financial incentive, and if that means that we have to reckon with the dysfunctional nature of the status quo - millions of livelihoods dependent on the grace of a few megacorporations - maybe that's a good thing (in the long run). Or, I guess we can just let the Attention-Industrial complex swallow everything without a fight.

Yeah, but if Google were forced to divest Chrome then parts of its proprietary code would have to be open-sourced and integrated into Chromium to minimize disruption to users. Alternatively, Google would have to make its services more interoperable.

This is such a valuable article from 2008. I've archived it here: https://archive.is/hVove

> Having it owned by a non-profit foundation would make a huge amount of sense,...

OpenAI joined the chat...

This is wishful thinking. Non-profits that don’t turn into for-profit turn into a shitshow of incompetence instead.

Firefox is sponsored primary by Google. WPEngine is not. It would be like Automattic giving control to Wordpress foundation.

They'll do what their benefactor (Goog) wants whether they own chrome or not.

Broadcom.

Logged-in Chrome users are tied to Google logins. The mind boggles at the complexity of trying to somehow separate Chrome identities from Google identities, much less explain that to the general populace for whom "Google", "Chrome" and "browse the Internet" are largely interchangeable.

And what do I, the new owner of this user base, do with it?

If this actually happens, I think it would turn perception of Nadella from good CEO that got lucky with OpenAI to a certified shadow master that's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.

I'm pretty sure M$ just shifted to edge because they didn't want to invest the money into catching up with chromium, since explorer was a pile of shit and was losing anyway

How is this the only possibility? What about Opera or something?

Nah, MS doesn't own search, ads, email and half the rest of the internet.

Chrome isn't being run bad because of committee, it's being run bad because it's used by Google as part of their web advertising empire.

Chrome is not run badly at all. But in its current state it gives Google the ability to singlehandedly dictate webstandards. Thats an issue.

I think the point is to stop adding more features. The web is feature complete, everything Google is adding is just stuff to make them more money through ads and lock in.

I love capitalism

Presumably Google, Bing etc. would still be bidding to be the default search engine?

Google is paying Apple $20 billion per year just for that so financing 1000 engineers (which is probably excessive, a few hundred + contributions from other companies using Chromium might be enough) shouldn't be too hard.

That seems to work for Mozilla. It would be nice to see other revenue models, but that exists and having the most used browser as a search client should pay at least as good as whatever deal Mozilla and Apple get.

> you need to pay something like 1,000 engineers - and not just any engineers, but engineers used to Alphabet's SF Bay Area salaries and equity packages

Why? I'm arguing you can downsize the portfolio without sacrificing product quality for most users. That should let one get by with fewer engineers and/or ones in lower-cost areas.

Yes, Google can be forced to sign a consent decree saying it will not engage in browser building or distribution for a set length of time and the DOJ can set up offices inside of Google and staff them with DOJ employees who make sure Google follows that agreement.

It seems like you have no familiarity with any of this. If so, happy to help educate you. If I'm wrong and you're just trolling, it was hard to tell.

I don't like Mozilla's advertising strategy either. But their primary product can't sustain itself.

> Amazon literally uses the marketplace data to determine which products to make Amazon Basic versions of.

So does BestBuy, Kroger, WalMart, drug manufacturers, and literally ever single other industry where there are generics, private brands, and copycat products/services of all types.

Thank you for making us all feel very old.

Slight aside on the original post:

* Microsoft did just fight off a huge government battle on Activision. I believe they lost a battle on Teams bundling. Last week the FTC announced they were looking into Azure.

* Apple, their store & mobile browser has been a topic of monopoly discussions for years.

* Amazon wasn't allowed to buy Roomba just this past year. They've had tons of inquires over the past decade.

Or run for Congress in the midterms if they are 25 by the time of the next election two years from now.

I look back and I honestly wonder if that lawsuit actually had the effect they intended.

AWS charges Amazon to use their servers as it does any other big business. If your department can’t be profitable taking into account your AWS bill, questions will be asked.

It happened to something related to an internal game studio (???)

When I was there, our department’s use of the internal system for creating sandbox accounts (Isengard) was charged against our profit and loss.

If you are a big enough customer, you can get rates similar to what AWS charges Amazon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

I'm not sure that misunderestimating the amount of time that's passed invalidates the point that it was pretty widely known before apparently being lost to the mists of time.

In case I wasn't clear enough, my argument is this:

> The world's biggest ad and surveillance company having control over the most widely used browser on the planet is a recipe for disaster. That's the only thing that matters in this discussion.

And no, I don't buy that innovation can only happen through monopolies with a savior complex. That absurd amount of money those monopolies acquired through questionable means? It's going to lawyers, lobbyists, investors, and C-suites. It's being used to stifle innovation and uphold the status quo. Without the breakup of AT&T, the internet as we know it might not have even existed.

You have made the argument that monopolies are trade-offs only to the extent of muddying the waters about the matter. You have not demonstrated that the innovation benefit of monopolies offsets opportunity cost of the monopoly. If you want to make that case, you need to evidence it. You have not evidenced your claim that there is less innovation in low-monopoly situations than in high-monopoly situations. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

(I agree with your earlier sentiment that Google has a history of giving out more than other companies you listed.)

> So your argument is that Bell Labs should have never happened? It was a bad thing for humanity?

Yes! next question please. ;) No in all seriousness. that's not what they said.

> My argument is that Monopolies are trade offs. In a world without monopolies you have very little innovation in peace time. Monopolies are bad for consumers but the trade off is that they can afford to innovate and push the world forward. It's not as black and white as people like to think.

I find this argument funny, as it states: "not as black and white as people think" to then paint a black and white argument... Yes monopolies are not always bad. But one can't be serious and not acknowledge that for the most part they stifle innovation.

Also, I would say some of humanities best inventions and innovations where before monopolies. But hey, that's just my "black and white" view on history ;)

The disaster of global surveillance? Just because you don't pay with money doesn't mean the product is free. Expecting users beyond the HN crowd to have an informed opinion about the browser war is not realistic, especially given the substantial amount of dollars that Alphabet spent to market "Chrome == Internet". Which antitrust laws are supposed to prevent.

Thing is Google lost money for many years in YouTube. Nowadays I think it's profitable but it seems unfair to ask a company to take loses for a decade or more and then force to sell it when it's making profit. If we set that precedent nobody will take risks with the next YouTube like company that loses money initially.

Curious, do run into any network/IO performance issues? Last time I checked, networking is horrible, I mean `npm install ` would time out when it works on the host without issues, and this was a well known issue. Haven't touched WSL for a while because of this.

Microsoft famously lost an antitrust case two decades ago. They’re also currently under investigation for Azure: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/ftc-to-probe...

There are good examples: https://www.eff.org/wp/who-has-your-back-2019

I' m European. Apple got charged by the European Union for $14.4 billions of unpaid taxes between 2019 and 2021. Back of the mapkin they employ 22k people in EU (data Apple), average salary $80k (Apple), taxes at 30% per employee (my own understanding). Thats $550M. So their payroll taxes is about 15% of their tax package. If you have any contradictory data, I would love it, but your point is moot for 95% of the world outside California.

No it’s not. You have to give up your civil right to a jury trial via agreeing to a contract with Google. Just because something costs zero dollars doesn’t mean it’s free.

You also give up your identity; you cannot make a Google account from a VPN without providing a non-voip mobile number. Privacy has value too.

https://workspace.google.com/pricing

Online office is free, just like Google's.

Visual Studio has a free version.

Windows can be used for free (unactivated) if you're okay with the limitations.

I'm not sure I agree with you on innovation. One of the largest drivers of innovation, historically, has been war and desperation. In those circumstances, you generally can't afford to lose. So the idea of innovation needing the comfort of a soft landing doesn't really seem to fit reality.

> In a perfect competition environment all profits go to 0.

Competition drives prices down to the lowest sustainable point but not to zero. If one company drives prices below a sustainable (profitable) point that’s market failure because it starves the competition. It’s the thing Google did and the reason we have anti-trust law.

Google created a situation where they had no competition. Necessity being the mother of invention suggests that they innovate less in the absence of competition. Monopolies are poison to innovation.

I'm still missing it

We're not in a perfect competition environment ; profits are not to 0. There is an incentive for innovation.

Monopolies stifle innovation just the same. Imagine having an "amazon basics" product as your competitor. Or competing with something that embeds well in a closed off ecosystem like Apple's or Google's when 90% of your target demographic will value that integration.

Innovation breeds from a middle ground

The goldilocks is closer to 0 than not

They wouldn't need to do that, they would just need to sell the third party ads part they can still run their own first party ads on their own domains.

Forcing Google to do that would just hurt other websites income, not Google.

Why would either of those two be allowed to buy Chrome. Meta is just as much an ad business and quasi-monopoly as Google is. Microsoft has already been in legal trouble over browsers and is actively trying to recreate Google ad empire.

Governments are kinda stupid in these cases, but I think Google would be able to argue, if forced to sell, that neither of those two companies would improve the market situation.

Sell it to Opera, except they're Chinese now. Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, the co-founder of Opera and CEO of Vivaldi, should buy it, that would be a hilarious outcome.

My ideal outcome would be something like:

1) Chrome is spun out as a standalone entity. Google would originally have full ownership but be forced to sell down over time.

2) Google buys the Chrome traffic at a fair price

3) Apple sells their traffic to someone else, potentially an AI search player (Meta??)

4) MSFT makes a new browser in response to Chrome going closed source

IMHO Microsoft yes, Meta no.

Microsoft wouldn't have a the kind of vertically integrated monopoly where they control both the internet properties and the browser used to access them.

> That is true in a valid point but install Windows sometimes and see how much it pushes you toward the edge browser.

The difference here is that Microsoft's reputation is beyond ruined in this product category due to Internet Explorer.

I'm shocked that Apple hasn't cracked down on this process through App store reviews. It's such an awful experience.

How else is Google supposed to "integrate" within iOS?

Safari and Messages etcetera link to within the closed Apple ecosystem - just like Windows. It can be between difficult to impossible to send an email or create a calendar item unless you use the iOS apps.

I'm definitely no Google fanboi but every answer being "Google are arseholes" feels dishonest.

The Chromium developer team absolutely kick arse and being open source is a true gift. Mozilla is badly failing to compete. Microsoft failed to compete with their first Edge rewrite, and now ironicalky MS "competes" using Chromium open source.

And why did Chromium have to split from WebKit? As an outsider it just looked like "because Apple don't want to play nice".

The story is always simplified to Google greedy arseholes. A typical response: you can never ever ever satisfy open source proponents... The stereotype that every open source user greedily wants more.

Desktop Safari’s ~15% market share, which exceeds Firefox’s ~7%, suggests otherwise. Mac users can freely switch and yet many don’t.

There are likely several reasons for this but I think the two biggest ones are its differences in philosophy: first, that browsers should be just one utility among many on a desktop OS and not try to set itself apart and second, to actively combat the internet’s hostilities on behalf of the user.

Chrome will never do either. It tries to be a distinct brand and platform instead of meshing with your desktop nicely and it’s not going to do anything that will negatively impact Google’s many ad businesses.

I agree that the DOJ should enforce browser choice in iOS much like the EU has but in this scenario it feels besides the point. No matter how better or worse anyone might think Safari is it’s my right to choose which browser I access a site with, and I’d rather not be harassed to change.

> still forces Safari to be used on iOS no matter what browser you think you have inst

What's the difference whether Chrome is using WebKit or Blink from the perspective of most users? How would they notice that and why would they care?

I find Safari to be a fantastic product overall both on desktop and mobile but I have stuck to Chrome to keep my options open in future in case I want to use non-Apple hardware

It’s horizontal tying.

If Chrome was not owned by an ad company, the owners of chrome would push for instead of against privacy protections (see: firefox, safari).

The browser monopoly, which Chrome sells at a loss, enables the ad company. This is the problem.

Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google. So anything against ads does not get upstreamed to Chromium.

Chrome also is a major browser vendor, whereas kiwibrowser and opera are not, which means the standards boards listen to them more. If those seats were not owned by an ad company, standards would likely be different.

The monopoly the DoJ is trying to break up isn't Chrome, it's Search. From TFA:

> Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome — the most widely used browser worldwide — because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, said the people.

>Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.

With what funding? Chrome loses money. Edge loses money. Safari loses money. Firefox loses Google's money. Brave loses VC money.

Without some endless source of money, funding you for an ulterior motive, you can't compete with them. Which is why:

>For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case.

The anti-competitive practices ensure there can't be effective competition.

Monopolies aren't bad per se. Monopolies are bad because they allow you to abuse the market and consumers. If you can be similarly abusive without a full monopoly that's equally bad.

> I don't see how that equates to a monopoly

The monopoly is in ads. Google uses its control of Chrome to act uncompetitively in advertising.

>I do realize you can still use uBlock

No, you can't. You can use "uBlock origin lite" which is the manifest v3 version that doesn't work correctly.

M3 seems to be failing, but I agree that it matters that the tried.

Uh. That was not my understanding of that situation.

Blocking third party cookies this way still leaves Google’s tools which people voluntarily install with access to data that now nobody else has access to.

The whole reason for "privacy sandbox" is to still do user tracking, but do it in an anonymous way that they hope legislators won't go after. It's Google seeing the writing on the wall that legislation will soon ban third-party cookie tracking and fingerprinting and the like, so they need to be proactive and protect the ad tracking business.

A better name for it would have been something like "anonymous user tracking / data collection", but "privacy sandbox" is probably a good marketing term to fuzz what it's really doing. To a normal user it makes it sounds like Google is doing something good and protecting them, while it's really just "please opt in to our new more anonymized tracking technology while still allowing us to track you".

Why would you want all this stuff synced? The only thing I want out of that is passwords, but 1Password works just fine for that. In fact, I don't trust a browser to store my passwords securely.

It is a hurdle to switch, yes.

But everything you listed (apart from integrating with Google's servers) can be done with Firefox.

This would be a relevant list, except no one I know who compulsively uses Chrome...uses any of that stuff at all.

Google Meet is particularly Firefox hostile with camera/audio support, but I'm not sure how common it actually is.

This is the last big thing keeping me on Vivaldi (based on chromium). I do use those, and would most likely fully switch to Firefox when implemented.

What things are only available as PWAs that are worth it? Like I know they exist, but I've never installed or used one.

One difference between lite and the full version is CNAME cloaking protection. The enforcement of Manifest V3 in Chrome opens up a gap in the ecosystem where analytics and advertising providers will increasingly use CNAME cloaking, since it can't be blocked from the world's most popular browser. And this is the world in which using Firefox with its support for Manifest V2 suddenly becomes quite a bit more attractive.

It works fine for now. As soon as Manifest V2 is officially gone you will certainly see an increase in ads. What ad company wouldn't take advantage of more limited ad blocking capabilities in the most popular web browser?

That's just Google boiling the frog slowly.

This wiki page on uBlock origin repository is a direct answer to your question.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

> it was faster, lighter and better

And more stable

I think it's a combination of both. There was absolutely a period where Chrome was faster, and Chrome still has a better security design. But Google also pushed Chrome incredibly hard, including bundling it with other software as a checked-by-default box, and used all the tactics to get it made the default browser and make it hard to switch, and advertised it on Google services for free, and made some features of Google products require it.

It took hold because it was a part of almost every popular piece of software installer back in the day, and enabled by default

But they are in early development, they are making great progress every month.

i like webRTC as a technology but it seriously bothered me that any random website can get all my local IP addresses by default.

which dunce at Google was responsible for that?

Imagine if Google isn't allowed to pay Chrome Inc for traffic acquisition so Chrome changes the default search engine to Bing and now Bing is a monopoly because 90% of browsers default to Bing.

This is most likely an EU special, because Chrome doesn't even remotely do that in the US or Japan.

Yes, they can, so it's not an asset???

The answer to your question is simple - because you can get funded by Google to keep its search the default

No, but with big market share comes big responsibility.

Video streaming is extremely unprofitable sure, but in its care it tries to leverage its market share with Chrome browser to benefit. And you are not allowed to do that when your market share is big.

Sure that's a colloquial sense, but we're talking about a legal sense here.

The legal/ethical sense is where one party has an actual obligation to multiple other parties whose interests are incompatible. For instance, a lawyer who represents both sides of a dispute has a conflict in interest; they cannot faithfully satisfy their obligations to all their clients.

In your example you cited a few services,

* provide a search engine

* provide login

* run ads business

* provide a web browser

But you haven't explained what the legal/ethical obligations are, and where the conflict arises, e.g., how one company cannot possibly fulfill all of those obligations.

No the article is about Chrome, not Chromium