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DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

191 points by uxjw 2y ago

staplung 2y ago
Honest question: who are the potential realistic buyers of Chrome? OS vendors already have their own browsers and Chrome doesn't directly make much (any?) money.
- alt227 2y ago
  Elon Musk
- explain 2y ago
  new vectors of monetization: - ecom (amazon?) - AI (openai?)
  - staplung 2y ago
    Hadn't though about openai, which does seem like a possible interested party. The problem for them however is that they make money from subscriptions, not ads which presumably makes it much harder to monetize via control of the browser.
- Croftengea 2y ago
  Alphabet
- 9283409232 2y ago
  I don't mean this because he is topical but Musk makes the most sense. In the same way Brave has Brave Wallet, if Musk really wants to force his X Pay and Wallet on the world, integrating with the most popular browser is a solid move.
  - etc-hosts 2y ago
    Hellworld.
  - Tostino 2y ago
    No way. He is part of the government forcing the sale. What have we come to in this country.
    - 9283409232 2y ago
      Trump has a meme coin used to grift the entire country. I'm surprised this potential conflict of interest is what is causing you to throw your hands up.
      - Tostino 2y ago
        I'm nowhere near cool with that either...
- maxwell 2y ago
  Crypto.com
- tannhaeuser 2y ago
  Nobody is going to buy it given the perverse incentives set in the last two decades. However, Chrome does have value to SaaS providers making use of browsers as frontends, and it should be possible to setup a foundation for Chrome maintenance. Funding could also come from the "ad industry" or what's left of it. If however it turns out Google plus very few other actors (Fb) will totally dominate this consortium once again, then obviously there must be additional measures, such as selling YT and/or DoubleClick.
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  The kingdom of saudia arabia.
- spankalee 2y ago
  No one. Chrome would be bought for pennies on the dollar, and the buyer wouldn't be able to sustain the project.
  - alt227 2y ago
    It doesnt need to be sustained at the level Google is pushing it. Development could slow down considerably and it wouldnt harm anything, in fact it would do just what the DoJ wants and make it a fairer playing field for other browsers to catch up and compete.
    - spankalee 2y ago
      As a web developer who really wants to see the web keep evolving so I can build better things: that would definitely harm things. Chrome is keeping the pressure on Apple to actually invest in the web. Without Chrome, the web withers and Apple reenforces their walled app garden.
      - alt227 2y ago
        > the web withers It really doesnt. The current pace of new web standards and browser features mean frameworks and code need to constantly be checking if each browser supports the new thing, and not releasing said feature until enough versions of browsers support the thing to make it widespread enough to use. Even then, people in lesser developed countries that are using older devices with older versions of browsers on them are seeing broken and unuseable versions of the web, just because big companies are racing to 'push the web forward'. As a web developer who wants to see the rate of new standards and features slow down so that all browsers can adopt them safely at a sensible pace without needing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on development, I really hope for this outcome.
  - azemetre 2y ago
    Google pays many companies tens of billions to make sure Google Search is the default engine on a variety of browsers. Something tells me a product that can garner billions of dollars will do just fine if sliced away. If Google gives firefox $500million to be the default search at 5% user share, they should pay Chrome $20 billion for the same privilege. The true damage that should be done is to separate Gmail + workspaces, Maps, Youtube, GCP, Android, and Search as their own separate entities then undo the DoubleClick merger. That would be true justice.
- gerash 2y ago
  Softbank
gnabgib 2y ago
Discussion (467 points, 2 days ago, 651 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886
sjs382 2y ago
When Chrome launched, Google was still in their "if it's good for the open web, it's good for Google" phase. Now, with Google as the entrenched incumbent in so many different spaces, what's good for the web is not necessarily good for Google anymore.
smnthermes 2y ago
It would make more sense that Google be forced to sell Google Play + Services, not Android.
lawrenceyan 2y ago
Everyone uses Chrome basically for crypto extensions anecdotally. They did a good job there. All developers I know build pretty much exclusively on Chrome desktop wise.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kristopolous 2y ago
I guess Elon Musk is working on a web browser and a bunch of put options were put on Google. Let's be real, this administration is just doing stock manipulations and looting the public purse while running a media circus to distract people.
- hansvm 2y ago
  Or wants to buy one.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  This makes sense. Musk is an authoritarian and buying the most popular browser lets him force Twitter and his crypto shit on everyone at once. Especially at a time where Mozilla is faltering. The moral of the story in all of this is that there are no viable alternatives to most things.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jcranmer 2y ago
IMHO, the real issue with Google isn't the control of the web browser, but the complete vertical integration of the ad space. Divest Google of its position as the ad broker (i.e., unwind its acquisition of DoubleClick), and prohibit any sort of privileged data flow from Google to ex-Google Ads, and you'd probably have a more viable solution than the poking DoJ is trying to do right now.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  This case wasn't about that, unfortunately. I believe that this will happen though, at some point in the next few years.
- _dark_matter_ 2y ago
  Confusingly, this is the contents of a second and separate antitrust suit against Google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_... This first one is about dominant market position by paying for placement on all surfaces (iPhone, Firefox, etc.) plus chrome. So splitting off chrome and android make sense in the context of the suit.
- Zigurd 2y ago
  You have to wonder if Google didn't somehow maneuver the DOJ into telling them to do something that's going to result in higher costs and user inconvenience, as opposed to something effective like you've proposed here. On the other hand, Google would argue that Doubleclick is Google, and everything else Google does is just to create channels for ads, and acquire data for ad targeting and pricing.
- rafram 2y ago
  Why? Google develops ad-supported software, they run their own ad placement service for it, and they allow others to use that service to run ads on their own sites. I think there's a bit of a conflict of interest between running the website ranking service and running an ad service that ranked websites can choose to use, but that's minor compared to also controlling the browsing platform. If Google started ranking sites that use AdSense higher than other sites, you could probably prove that in court fairly easily — your lawyers would make them hand over their ranking code during discovery, and it would say `if (usesAdSense) score++`, and you'd win. But if they made (are making) subtle web platform changes via their control of the browsing platform that hurt competitors and help Google, that's extremely difficult to prove. Look at third-party cookies, for example.
iptq 2y ago
This headline seems misleading; the way I'm reading this, it's still just a request to the courts, who will make the final decision right?
- dhrm1k 2y ago
  it indeed is. when I saw it in my mstdn feed, i too was shocked but upon reading, uh, no.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- MBCook 2y ago
  Yes. This is the DOJ’s proposal for what should happen now that Google was found guilty. Google will make their own proposal, I think. Then the judge will decide. Then 50 years of appeals.
mentalgear 2y ago
Let's wait how long it takes for Trump's crypto / meme coin to get a spike and this DOJ thing to go away. After all, all is transactional with Trump.
- shwaj 2y ago
  How would that work, exactly? Would Google’s search algorithm highlight pro-TRUMP articles to pump the token price? I think you’ll be waiting a long time.
  - mentalgear 2y ago
    nope, just a direct payment, but since it's crypto it's untracable. Basically money laundering. Why do you think the purpose is of all these shit-coins (besides pump-and-dumps).
bobajeff 2y ago
I think Google should just be split up into baby Google's that each have to cooperate with each other. Like we did with Bell. Also we should do the same thing to Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. In fact I think we should do it again to AT&T and also Comcast. This should probably be done every so often as maintenance.
- martinsnow 2y ago
  Which business units should be broken up?
  - SteveNuts 2y ago
    Microsoft and Azure, Bing, Office 365 Amazon (the retailer portion) and AWS, and probably their logistics wing
    - martinsnow 2y ago
      None of those are owned by Google
      - RIMR 2y ago
        And? We were talking about other businesses that should be split up in addition to Google. It would be weird if the only answers were Google-owned ventures...
        martinsnow 2y ago
        Not in the context of my question. You are welcome to start your own comment thread.
    - jonny_eh 2y ago
      This would kill xbox
      - 2y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Can we go back to buying software? This free software subsidized by big ad money has fucked the whole market up.
- hn_acc1 2y ago
  Agreed. Would much rather pay $100-200/year for ad-free OS / productivity software that is patched and secure and doesn't sell my data. Alas, very people put that high a value on their privacy.
  - pabs3 2y ago
    You could switch to a Linux distro for that. Most of them are gratis, but accept donations or contributions. For example Debian & LibreOffice. That said, even well intentioned distros that don't sell your data will have some privacy issues, inherited from upstreams. https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues
seanhunter 2y ago
Feel like splitting ad sales from search is the one meaningful structural change they could insist upon that would actually make a difference to Google's monopoly position. Anything like this is really more window-dressing than anything.
- ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
  And then have ad companies bid on spots instead of companies? That just sounds like adding a middleman (inefficency) to the system. Like making me go to a car dealer instead of just adding to cart like anything else. The other alternative would be paying for search, in which case everyone would just leave for another search engine the next day. Which is honestly why I have so much calling google search a monopoly. The switching cost is comically cheap and easy. You could cut out Google search within the next 5 minutes from the rest of your life.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    The whole point is to introduce more players into the system so there is the possibility of competition. At present it is very efficient in the sense that you have a single company with monopolistic control over what content gets surfaced and how content gets monetised. That's a conflict of interest that's so obviously harmful to consumers Page and Brin actually call it out in the original "Anatomy of a Search Engine" paper. "Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious." http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf (see the whole section entitled "Advertising and Mixed Motives".
- layer8 2y ago
  Android is pretty important as well, with its forced Google integration.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dbg31415 2y ago
This is so dumb. Look, I hate how dominant Chrome is. It’s basically a glorified data vacuum for Google—and it’s only getting worse. But at the end of the day, people choose to use Chrome, and I don’t see why Google shouldn’t be allowed to own and develop it. There are still plenty of other browsers people can switch to. Now, what’s actually dangerous is the growing trend of sites blocking non-Google search engines from indexing their content. That’s a real issue—and it’s escalating fast. Selling Chrome won’t do a damn thing to fix that. Besides, no other company has the budget or incentive to maintain Chrome at the level Google does. If they’re forced to give it up, then what? A half-baked, underfunded mess? A fragmented ecosystem? None of this feels like a win. ... unless your goal is to have Elon be able to pick up a new browser to go along with Twitter and TickTock.
jmyeet 2y ago
I have no idea how a for-profit company can exist that solely produces a browser. There's only one model that can work long-term here: collective ownership. The closest model is probably the Wikimedia Foundation. Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation are here, obviously, but they've tried to act like a corporation with rising costs and lower earnings going over years. The money Google pays them is basically poison. Linux has survived and thrived with something analagous to this but it's also dependent to an unsettling degree on one person (Linus Torvalds). I realize his power has decentralized over the years (intentionally, by Linus) but there's still the constnat risk of a schism. Google and Chrome is just one small part of the problem. Apple's Safari monopoly on iOS is also a problem. Browsers really need to be a common good. I suspect none of this will happen. Even though these efforts began in the Biden administration, I suspect this will now become a shakedown. This administration will look to Google to fall in line and kiss the ring. That is now the cost of doing business.
- alt227 2y ago
  A Browser with 65% share of the worlds web access can be leveraged to do a lot of things.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    That share will plummet to near 0% the moment it is transferred because people will just switch to Chromium. The only difference between Chrome without Google and Chromium is the name and logo. You lose all integration with Google services like sync, suggestions, etc. You'd be stuck with only the captives that can't switch because they're using older appliances with Chrome baked in.
    - alt227 2y ago
      People only know the name and logo, they dont care whos behind it. 99% of users just click that little coloured circle to open 'the internet', they know nothing past that. They will continue to download Chrome for many years to come. The market share will drop, but slowly and over decades. That will give some greedy company plenty of time to milk it for all its worth.
SirMaster 2y ago
But would these services even be financially viable as separate entities? How does Chrome make income? Isn't it basically developed at a loss, but it makes money for Google's other business units?
- pcl 2y ago
  That’s sort of the point, right? The monopoly laws are designed to go after companies that are using their monopoly position in one market to subsidize other product lines to keep out competition.
  - andrewla 2y ago
    I agree that's what the laws are supposed to go after, but forced sale or divestment seems like the wrong remedy here. Force Google to charge money for the service, or to pay a portion of imputed stolen revenue to competitors. But Chrome itself is not a viable business without the huge fountain of money that is search ads.
  - jay_kyburz 2y ago
    Whats weird is that nobody has tried to sell browsers for a very long time. It's not like they gave away Chrome to drive some other browser out of the market. They developed Chrome because their business was web based and they wanted a solid platform for their apps. And we all benefited from that stable platform. And it's mostly open source in Chromium. And they are paying Mozilla to stay in the game - an arms length, independent implementation of standards. I think its wrong to suggest what they should have done is build an entire walled garden like Apple has done. Update: I think the important part of your statement was "too keep out competition." I don't see how developing and giving away Chrome is stifling the browser market. I can see how paying other people to make Google search default might stifling the search market, but that has nothing to do with Chrome.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
pton_xd 2y ago
The article mentions "Trump's DOJ" but in actuality the DOJ has been building a case against Google since at least 2021 [0]. [0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc-2023 https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-g...
- Zigurd 2y ago
  If anything, a DOJ under any Republican president is more likely to lean into the criterion of consumer welfare to determine antitrust priorities. You can bet Google's strategy is tuned for making the most of this theory of antitrust. There's almost nothing you can do to Google that won't make consumers have to pay more for a less convenient solution, due to messy technical issues.
shadowtree 2y ago
Man, I hope they break out Google Business apps. The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition. Try pricing something against this insane dumping price Google sets - there is no TAM, the M does not payback enough to justify the effort. The cross-financing with Ads would finally stop and fair pricing would come.
- ajross 2y ago
  > The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition. It literally led to the creation of Office 365 and broke open a market that had been closed to competition in the face of an unbreakable Microsoft Monopoly for decades! That sounds ridiculous on its face. Of all the product areas to complain about Google having a monopoly, you picked the office suite!? HN tends strongly to one side of this argument, but really this is trending towards a "Google Derangement Syndrome" kind of analysis.
  - alt227 2y ago
    Microsoft have always made a point that they can never compete with Google on price of office apps, therefore they try to compete on service, support, and included bells and whistles. This is why when you buy an O365 license you basically get anything Microsoft has ever developed thrown in with it. Office is Microsofts bread and butter, for Google its a side project that disrupts Microsofts business model.
    - ajross 2y ago
      > Microsoft have always made a point that they can never compete with Google on price of office apps, therefore they try to compete on service, support, and included bells and whistles. So... you're saying the presence in the market of a viable competitor improved the value provided to consumers? Who knew!
      - alt227 2y ago
        No Im saying that a big company decided to piss off another big company by offering their main product for free, just because they had infinite money and could. Thats disruption not competition, and you can be sure if Chrome is taken away, the price for Google office apps will increase.
gjsman-1000 2y ago
Personally, I’m increasingly looking into native app development; maybe starting with iOS. It’s good to have a diversified portfolio of skills, and if Chrome should be sold and not sustainable, there is the possibility that the rollout of new features to the web will feel like an Internet Explorer era malaise. The web may very well become a mostly frozen platform; warts and all. I’m also not interested in following the inevitable JavaScript framework attempts to overcome this. At least this time, we have Web Components, WASM, and Canvas, making polyfilling almost anything theoretically possible.
ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
Honestly I don't care if Google gets broken up, so long as Apple is first. People complain about whataboutism, but the Apple versus almost any other 'monopoly' is insane. You can switch browsers within the next 30s, you can't install an app from a third party vendor ever on iOS. [1] [1] Yes I know you can pay $100 a year, and then compile your own/open source apps weekly and move them to your device. No this is not a reasonable solution.
- quasarsunnix 2y ago
  I think the issue is horizontal vs. vertical monopolies. Apple do have a monopoly, but it's vertically integrated one. That's arguably their unique selling point; tightly integrated products without a great deal of customization. Google on the other hand have a monolithic market share in a number of key markets. There's really no competition to them in search or video for instance, whereby they command extremely dominant market share. Apple on the other hand do not dominate any markets, they just have a locked down product. Pretty similar to luxury cars, Nintendo, and other companies that think their customers value the integration over an open ecosystem.
- newbie578 2y ago
  You won’t hear that here because HN is notoriously pro Apple for some reason, even though all the evidence points to Apple being the same, if not bigger evil than Google
favorited 2y ago
In a completely unrelated story, the #1 post on HN at the moment is "uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922>
exabrial 2y ago
Good! Next: Android, YouTube
bdcravens 2y ago
A point that is often overlooked in discussions of this, which seems huge: they would also be banned from buying search engine dominance (as in, the primary source of Mozilla's revenue). "Similarly, Google would be prevented from pressuring its partners to use Google search or AI services over the competition."
butz 2y ago
How about we raise some money and buy Chrome for the users? First order of business will be removing all privacy invading "features" and re-enabling Manifest V2. If somehow we'll have some cash left, we might even contract Igalia to build blocker right into browser.
- bdzr 2y ago
  90% of the people here wouldn't pay $3/mo for a browser. Who do you think is going to raise the money?
mushufasa 2y ago
My guess is this may go to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Linux Foundation, or other industry consortium, since Chromium is already an industry standard and that structure would enable Google et al to continue to directly employ the developer teams currently working on it.
- jaybro867 2y ago
  [dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bhewes 2y ago
Ah yes Internet Explorer all over again. boring.
kweingar 2y ago
I wonder who would buy "Chromium with a Google skin." You'd get a massive user base, but what would you do with the product? The only thing that distinguishes it from other Chromium-based browsers is integration with Google account features, which doesn't seem useful for a non-Google company. Buying Chromium is a more interesting proposition, but you can't really "buy" it (aside from the trademark, infrastructure, domains) because the codebase isn't Google's to sell. Would the web coalesce around the new owners just because they inherit the CI and the repo?
sroussey 2y ago
The end result of this will be that Microsoft gets the Chrome team. I don’t know what the DOJ is thinking.
p0w3n3d 2y ago
This could be actually one of good decisions here...
jay_kyburz 2y ago
Here is a question for everybody. How would you feel if Google shut down Chrome, and created an app called the Google Application Platform. (GAP). The GAP would be the only place you could use Search, Workspace, YouTube, Maps, and every other google website. What would you think if Google just abandoned the open web entirely.

191 points by uxjw 2y ago

Honest question: who are the potential realistic buyers of Chrome? OS vendors already have their own browsers and Chrome doesn't directly make much (any?) money.

alt227 2y ago
Elon Musk
explain 2y ago
new vectors of monetization: - ecom (amazon?) - AI (openai?)
- staplung 2y ago
  Hadn't though about openai, which does seem like a possible interested party. The problem for them however is that they make money from subscriptions, not ads which presumably makes it much harder to monetize via control of the browser.
Croftengea 2y ago
Alphabet
9283409232 2y ago
I don't mean this because he is topical but Musk makes the most sense. In the same way Brave has Brave Wallet, if Musk really wants to force his X Pay and Wallet on the world, integrating with the most popular browser is a solid move.
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  Hellworld.
- Tostino 2y ago
  No way. He is part of the government forcing the sale. What have we come to in this country.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    Trump has a meme coin used to grift the entire country. I'm surprised this potential conflict of interest is what is causing you to throw your hands up.
    - Tostino 2y ago
      I'm nowhere near cool with that either...
maxwell 2y ago
Crypto.com
tannhaeuser 2y ago
Nobody is going to buy it given the perverse incentives set in the last two decades. However, Chrome does have value to SaaS providers making use of browsers as frontends, and it should be possible to setup a foundation for Chrome maintenance. Funding could also come from the "ad industry" or what's left of it. If however it turns out Google plus very few other actors (Fb) will totally dominate this consortium once again, then obviously there must be additional measures, such as selling YT and/or DoubleClick.
bloomingkales 2y ago
The kingdom of saudia arabia.
spankalee 2y ago
No one. Chrome would be bought for pennies on the dollar, and the buyer wouldn't be able to sustain the project.
- alt227 2y ago
  It doesnt need to be sustained at the level Google is pushing it. Development could slow down considerably and it wouldnt harm anything, in fact it would do just what the DoJ wants and make it a fairer playing field for other browsers to catch up and compete.
  - spankalee 2y ago
    As a web developer who really wants to see the web keep evolving so I can build better things: that would definitely harm things. Chrome is keeping the pressure on Apple to actually invest in the web. Without Chrome, the web withers and Apple reenforces their walled app garden.
    - alt227 2y ago
      > the web withers It really doesnt. The current pace of new web standards and browser features mean frameworks and code need to constantly be checking if each browser supports the new thing, and not releasing said feature until enough versions of browsers support the thing to make it widespread enough to use. Even then, people in lesser developed countries that are using older devices with older versions of browsers on them are seeing broken and unuseable versions of the web, just because big companies are racing to 'push the web forward'. As a web developer who wants to see the rate of new standards and features slow down so that all browsers can adopt them safely at a sensible pace without needing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on development, I really hope for this outcome.
- azemetre 2y ago
  Google pays many companies tens of billions to make sure Google Search is the default engine on a variety of browsers. Something tells me a product that can garner billions of dollars will do just fine if sliced away. If Google gives firefox $500million to be the default search at 5% user share, they should pay Chrome $20 billion for the same privilege. The true damage that should be done is to separate Gmail + workspaces, Maps, Youtube, GCP, Android, and Search as their own separate entities then undo the DoubleClick merger. That would be true justice.
gerash 2y ago
Softbank

gnabgib 2y ago

Discussion (467 points, 2 days ago, 651 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886

sjs382 2y ago

When Chrome launched, Google was still in their "if it's good for the open web, it's good for Google" phase. Now, with Google as the entrenched incumbent in so many different spaces, what's good for the web is not necessarily good for Google anymore.

smnthermes 2y ago

It would make more sense that Google be forced to sell Google Play + Services, not Android.

lawrenceyan 2y ago

Everyone uses Chrome basically for crypto extensions anecdotally. They did a good job there. All developers I know build pretty much exclusively on Chrome desktop wise.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kristopolous 2y ago

I guess Elon Musk is working on a web browser and a bunch of put options were put on Google. Let's be real, this administration is just doing stock manipulations and looting the public purse while running a media circus to distract people.

hansvm 2y ago
Or wants to buy one.
9283409232 2y ago
This makes sense. Musk is an authoritarian and buying the most popular browser lets him force Twitter and his crypto shit on everyone at once. Especially at a time where Mozilla is faltering. The moral of the story in all of this is that there are no viable alternatives to most things.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

jcranmer 2y ago

IMHO, the real issue with Google isn't the control of the web browser, but the complete vertical integration of the ad space. Divest Google of its position as the ad broker (i.e., unwind its acquisition of DoubleClick), and prohibit any sort of privileged data flow from Google to ex-Google Ads, and you'd probably have a more viable solution than the poking DoJ is trying to do right now.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
This case wasn't about that, unfortunately. I believe that this will happen though, at some point in the next few years.
_dark_matter_ 2y ago
Confusingly, this is the contents of a second and separate antitrust suit against Google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_... This first one is about dominant market position by paying for placement on all surfaces (iPhone, Firefox, etc.) plus chrome. So splitting off chrome and android make sense in the context of the suit.
Zigurd 2y ago
You have to wonder if Google didn't somehow maneuver the DOJ into telling them to do something that's going to result in higher costs and user inconvenience, as opposed to something effective like you've proposed here. On the other hand, Google would argue that Doubleclick is Google, and everything else Google does is just to create channels for ads, and acquire data for ad targeting and pricing.
rafram 2y ago
Why? Google develops ad-supported software, they run their own ad placement service for it, and they allow others to use that service to run ads on their own sites. I think there's a bit of a conflict of interest between running the website ranking service and running an ad service that ranked websites can choose to use, but that's minor compared to also controlling the browsing platform. If Google started ranking sites that use AdSense higher than other sites, you could probably prove that in court fairly easily — your lawyers would make them hand over their ranking code during discovery, and it would say `if (usesAdSense) score++`, and you'd win. But if they made (are making) subtle web platform changes via their control of the browsing platform that hurt competitors and help Google, that's extremely difficult to prove. Look at third-party cookies, for example.

iptq 2y ago

This headline seems misleading; the way I'm reading this, it's still just a request to the courts, who will make the final decision right?

dhrm1k 2y ago
it indeed is. when I saw it in my mstdn feed, i too was shocked but upon reading, uh, no.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
MBCook 2y ago
Yes. This is the DOJ’s proposal for what should happen now that Google was found guilty. Google will make their own proposal, I think. Then the judge will decide. Then 50 years of appeals.

mentalgear 2y ago

Let's wait how long it takes for Trump's crypto / meme coin to get a spike and this DOJ thing to go away. After all, all is transactional with Trump.

shwaj 2y ago
How would that work, exactly? Would Google’s search algorithm highlight pro-TRUMP articles to pump the token price? I think you’ll be waiting a long time.
- mentalgear 2y ago
  nope, just a direct payment, but since it's crypto it's untracable. Basically money laundering. Why do you think the purpose is of all these shit-coins (besides pump-and-dumps).

bobajeff 2y ago

I think Google should just be split up into baby Google's that each have to cooperate with each other. Like we did with Bell. Also we should do the same thing to Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. In fact I think we should do it again to AT&T and also Comcast. This should probably be done every so often as maintenance.

martinsnow 2y ago
Which business units should be broken up?
- SteveNuts 2y ago
  Microsoft and Azure, Bing, Office 365 Amazon (the retailer portion) and AWS, and probably their logistics wing
  - martinsnow 2y ago
    None of those are owned by Google
    - RIMR 2y ago
      And? We were talking about other businesses that should be split up in addition to Google. It would be weird if the only answers were Google-owned ventures...
      - martinsnow 2y ago
        Not in the context of my question. You are welcome to start your own comment thread.
  - jonny_eh 2y ago
    This would kill xbox
    - 2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

Can we go back to buying software? This free software subsidized by big ad money has fucked the whole market up.

hn_acc1 2y ago
Agreed. Would much rather pay $100-200/year for ad-free OS / productivity software that is patched and secure and doesn't sell my data. Alas, very people put that high a value on their privacy.
- pabs3 2y ago
  You could switch to a Linux distro for that. Most of them are gratis, but accept donations or contributions. For example Debian & LibreOffice. That said, even well intentioned distros that don't sell your data will have some privacy issues, inherited from upstreams. https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues

seanhunter 2y ago

Feel like splitting ad sales from search is the one meaningful structural change they could insist upon that would actually make a difference to Google's monopoly position. Anything like this is really more window-dressing than anything.

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
And then have ad companies bid on spots instead of companies? That just sounds like adding a middleman (inefficency) to the system. Like making me go to a car dealer instead of just adding to cart like anything else. The other alternative would be paying for search, in which case everyone would just leave for another search engine the next day. Which is honestly why I have so much calling google search a monopoly. The switching cost is comically cheap and easy. You could cut out Google search within the next 5 minutes from the rest of your life.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  The whole point is to introduce more players into the system so there is the possibility of competition. At present it is very efficient in the sense that you have a single company with monopolistic control over what content gets surfaced and how content gets monetised. That's a conflict of interest that's so obviously harmful to consumers Page and Brin actually call it out in the original "Anatomy of a Search Engine" paper. "Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious." http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf (see the whole section entitled "Advertising and Mixed Motives".
layer8 2y ago
Android is pretty important as well, with its forced Google integration.

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dbg31415 2y ago

This is so dumb. Look, I hate how dominant Chrome is. It’s basically a glorified data vacuum for Google—and it’s only getting worse. But at the end of the day, people choose to use Chrome, and I don’t see why Google shouldn’t be allowed to own and develop it. There are still plenty of other browsers people can switch to. Now, what’s actually dangerous is the growing trend of sites blocking non-Google search engines from indexing their content. That’s a real issue—and it’s escalating fast. Selling Chrome won’t do a damn thing to fix that. Besides, no other company has the budget or incentive to maintain Chrome at the level Google does. If they’re forced to give it up, then what? A half-baked, underfunded mess? A fragmented ecosystem? None of this feels like a win. ... unless your goal is to have Elon be able to pick up a new browser to go along with Twitter and TickTock.

jmyeet 2y ago

I have no idea how a for-profit company can exist that solely produces a browser. There's only one model that can work long-term here: collective ownership. The closest model is probably the Wikimedia Foundation. Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation are here, obviously, but they've tried to act like a corporation with rising costs and lower earnings going over years. The money Google pays them is basically poison. Linux has survived and thrived with something analagous to this but it's also dependent to an unsettling degree on one person (Linus Torvalds). I realize his power has decentralized over the years (intentionally, by Linus) but there's still the constnat risk of a schism. Google and Chrome is just one small part of the problem. Apple's Safari monopoly on iOS is also a problem. Browsers really need to be a common good. I suspect none of this will happen. Even though these efforts began in the Biden administration, I suspect this will now become a shakedown. This administration will look to Google to fall in line and kiss the ring. That is now the cost of doing business.

alt227 2y ago
A Browser with 65% share of the worlds web access can be leveraged to do a lot of things.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  That share will plummet to near 0% the moment it is transferred because people will just switch to Chromium. The only difference between Chrome without Google and Chromium is the name and logo. You lose all integration with Google services like sync, suggestions, etc. You'd be stuck with only the captives that can't switch because they're using older appliances with Chrome baked in.
  - alt227 2y ago
    People only know the name and logo, they dont care whos behind it. 99% of users just click that little coloured circle to open 'the internet', they know nothing past that. They will continue to download Chrome for many years to come. The market share will drop, but slowly and over decades. That will give some greedy company plenty of time to milk it for all its worth.

SirMaster 2y ago

But would these services even be financially viable as separate entities? How does Chrome make income? Isn't it basically developed at a loss, but it makes money for Google's other business units?

pcl 2y ago
That’s sort of the point, right? The monopoly laws are designed to go after companies that are using their monopoly position in one market to subsidize other product lines to keep out competition.
- andrewla 2y ago
  I agree that's what the laws are supposed to go after, but forced sale or divestment seems like the wrong remedy here. Force Google to charge money for the service, or to pay a portion of imputed stolen revenue to competitors. But Chrome itself is not a viable business without the huge fountain of money that is search ads.
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  Whats weird is that nobody has tried to sell browsers for a very long time. It's not like they gave away Chrome to drive some other browser out of the market. They developed Chrome because their business was web based and they wanted a solid platform for their apps. And we all benefited from that stable platform. And it's mostly open source in Chromium. And they are paying Mozilla to stay in the game - an arms length, independent implementation of standards. I think its wrong to suggest what they should have done is build an entire walled garden like Apple has done. Update: I think the important part of your statement was "too keep out competition." I don't see how developing and giving away Chrome is stifling the browser market. I can see how paying other people to make Google search default might stifling the search market, but that has nothing to do with Chrome.
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pton_xd 2y ago

The article mentions "Trump's DOJ" but in actuality the DOJ has been building a case against Google since at least 2021 [0]. [0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc-2023 https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-g...

Zigurd 2y ago
If anything, a DOJ under any Republican president is more likely to lean into the criterion of consumer welfare to determine antitrust priorities. You can bet Google's strategy is tuned for making the most of this theory of antitrust. There's almost nothing you can do to Google that won't make consumers have to pay more for a less convenient solution, due to messy technical issues.

shadowtree 2y ago

Man, I hope they break out Google Business apps. The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition. Try pricing something against this insane dumping price Google sets - there is no TAM, the M does not payback enough to justify the effort. The cross-financing with Ads would finally stop and fair pricing would come.

ajross 2y ago
> The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition. It literally led to the creation of Office 365 and broke open a market that had been closed to competition in the face of an unbreakable Microsoft Monopoly for decades! That sounds ridiculous on its face. Of all the product areas to complain about Google having a monopoly, you picked the office suite!? HN tends strongly to one side of this argument, but really this is trending towards a "Google Derangement Syndrome" kind of analysis.
- alt227 2y ago
  Microsoft have always made a point that they can never compete with Google on price of office apps, therefore they try to compete on service, support, and included bells and whistles. This is why when you buy an O365 license you basically get anything Microsoft has ever developed thrown in with it. Office is Microsofts bread and butter, for Google its a side project that disrupts Microsofts business model.
  - ajross 2y ago
    > Microsoft have always made a point that they can never compete with Google on price of office apps, therefore they try to compete on service, support, and included bells and whistles. So... you're saying the presence in the market of a viable competitor improved the value provided to consumers? Who knew!
    - alt227 2y ago
      No Im saying that a big company decided to piss off another big company by offering their main product for free, just because they had infinite money and could. Thats disruption not competition, and you can be sure if Chrome is taken away, the price for Google office apps will increase.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

Personally, I’m increasingly looking into native app development; maybe starting with iOS. It’s good to have a diversified portfolio of skills, and if Chrome should be sold and not sustainable, there is the possibility that the rollout of new features to the web will feel like an Internet Explorer era malaise. The web may very well become a mostly frozen platform; warts and all. I’m also not interested in following the inevitable JavaScript framework attempts to overcome this. At least this time, we have Web Components, WASM, and Canvas, making polyfilling almost anything theoretically possible.

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago

Honestly I don't care if Google gets broken up, so long as Apple is first. People complain about whataboutism, but the Apple versus almost any other 'monopoly' is insane. You can switch browsers within the next 30s, you can't install an app from a third party vendor ever on iOS. [1] [1] Yes I know you can pay $100 a year, and then compile your own/open source apps weekly and move them to your device. No this is not a reasonable solution.

quasarsunnix 2y ago
I think the issue is horizontal vs. vertical monopolies. Apple do have a monopoly, but it's vertically integrated one. That's arguably their unique selling point; tightly integrated products without a great deal of customization. Google on the other hand have a monolithic market share in a number of key markets. There's really no competition to them in search or video for instance, whereby they command extremely dominant market share. Apple on the other hand do not dominate any markets, they just have a locked down product. Pretty similar to luxury cars, Nintendo, and other companies that think their customers value the integration over an open ecosystem.
newbie578 2y ago
You won’t hear that here because HN is notoriously pro Apple for some reason, even though all the evidence points to Apple being the same, if not bigger evil than Google

favorited 2y ago

In a completely unrelated story, the #1 post on HN at the moment is "uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922>

exabrial 2y ago

Good! Next: Android, YouTube

bdcravens 2y ago

A point that is often overlooked in discussions of this, which seems huge: they would also be banned from buying search engine dominance (as in, the primary source of Mozilla's revenue). "Similarly, Google would be prevented from pressuring its partners to use Google search or AI services over the competition."

butz 2y ago

How about we raise some money and buy Chrome for the users? First order of business will be removing all privacy invading "features" and re-enabling Manifest V2. If somehow we'll have some cash left, we might even contract Igalia to build blocker right into browser.

bdzr 2y ago
90% of the people here wouldn't pay $3/mo for a browser. Who do you think is going to raise the money?

mushufasa 2y ago

My guess is this may go to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Linux Foundation, or other industry consortium, since Chromium is already an industry standard and that structure would enable Google et al to continue to directly employ the developer teams currently working on it.

jaybro867 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago

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bhewes 2y ago

Ah yes Internet Explorer all over again. boring.

kweingar 2y ago

I wonder who would buy "Chromium with a Google skin." You'd get a massive user base, but what would you do with the product? The only thing that distinguishes it from other Chromium-based browsers is integration with Google account features, which doesn't seem useful for a non-Google company. Buying Chromium is a more interesting proposition, but you can't really "buy" it (aside from the trademark, infrastructure, domains) because the codebase isn't Google's to sell. Would the web coalesce around the new owners just because they inherit the CI and the repo?

sroussey 2y ago

The end result of this will be that Microsoft gets the Chrome team. I don’t know what the DOJ is thinking.

p0w3n3d 2y ago

This could be actually one of good decisions here...

jay_kyburz 2y ago

Here is a question for everybody. How would you feel if Google shut down Chrome, and created an app called the Google Application Platform. (GAP). The GAP would be the only place you could use Search, Workspace, YouTube, Maps, and every other google website. What would you think if Google just abandoned the open web entirely.