DOJ Wants Google to Sell Chrome and De-Google Android
Juli Clover (Hacker News, 9To5Google):
The United States Department of Justice wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as part of an ongoing antitrust lawsuit, reports Bloomberg. Earlier this year, Google was found to have a search monopoly, and antitrust regulators have since been deciding on the actions that should be taken to address Google’s anticompetitive practices.
The DoJ plans to ask the court to force Google to sell Chrome, which is the most popular web browser in the world by a wide margin. Chrome’s integration with Google Search and other Google products has been cited as one of the factors limiting search competition.
Regulators also want Google to uncouple the Android operating system from other products like Google Search and the Google Play Store, both of which are apps installed on Android devices by default. It’s not clear how unbundling Android from Google Play would work as Google Play is the Android app store.
This doesn’t make sense to me, and I don’t even really understand what they think it would help with. If there are illegal behaviors, why not address them directly?
This was stupid when they tried to do this to Microsoft 25 years ago. It’s equally stupid to do this to Google.
If Google were forced to sell Chrome, who’d make the default web browser for Android? Android can’t ship without a default browser. And the DOJ wants Google to “uncouple” Android from the Google Play store? Allowing Google to keep Android but not make its own web browser or app store is just nonsense.
[…]
Chrome is not a standalone business. Android is not a standalone business. They’re both just appendages of Google that serve only as distribution channels for the advertising Google shows in search results, and the money it makes from advertising and game commissions in the Play Store. It’s like saying I have to sell my left foot. It’s very valuable to me, but of no value to anyone on its own.
This proposal is kind of nuts since the only business model for web browsers is revenue share from search results. That’s how Edge, Safari, Firefox and Chrome make money.
So the only way it makes sense for anyone to buy Chrome is to make Google the default search, otherwise it’s not worth the investment.
The idea that Google would be broken up as a result of their loss in the antitrust trial against their Search monopoly was never going to happen. Instead, as I wrote last month, it was more like Negotiating 101. Start by putting the biggest ask out there, see how the market (including, notably, Google) reacts and go from there. Having read that particular room, it seems like the DoJ is now closing in on their actual opening proposal.
[…]
The government would argue that consumers will benefit as they'll no longer be as locked into Google Search – especially if this is coupled with an order to end any default search agreements with other browser makers. But unless those other browser makers choose another search engine as the default, it feels like Google Search will not be impacted very much. It is interesting to think if that would impact the uptake and growth of Gemini and a few other Google products, such as their payment services, but that's not what is on trial here.
It's not clear who could pay what for Chrome. Bloomberg throws out the notion of OpenAI being one potential home, but would the government really want that? That would risk anointing – well, really entrenching – a king in a new field. OpenAI's main benefactor, Microsoft could acquire it, especially now that their own Edge browser is all-in on Chromium. But they would probably just use it to bolster not just Bing by also their own AI products and services. And that would be extremely awkward for the government as well.
Previously:
- The State of Mozilla
- Firefox at 20
- Autoenshittification, YouTube, and Disenshittify or Die
- Google App Store Monopoly Remedy
- Does Google Chrome Still Devastate Mac Battery Life?
- Chrome’s Manifest V3 and uBlock Origin
- Google Search and Ads Monopoly
- Chromium Browsers Preferencing *.google.com Domains
- Most Compatible With Google Chrome
- Cue Testimony in US v. Google
- Chrome Faster Than Safari in Speedometer Benchmark
Update (2024-11-22): Michael Liedtke (PDF, Hacker News):
U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.
The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google’s industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine.
[…]
Although regulators stopped short of demanding Google sell Android too, they asserted the judge should make it clear the company could still be required to divest its smartphone operating system if its oversight committee continues to see evidence of misconduct.
The DOJ’s proposed remedies to address Google’s search monopoly are far reaching and will definitely reshape the internet:
- Google forced to sell Chrome
- Android can no longer promote Google Search
- Banned from default search deals on iPhones and other devices (Apple just lost $20B/year)
- Must license search index data to competitors
The second is that unlike the default search placement and deal they’re (rightfully, I think) worried about within browsers, using Chrome itself is actually a choice almost all users on desktops/laptops make. That’s because beyond ChromeOS devices, most such devices are Windows or Mac machines. And these devices generally do not have Chrome installed out of the box. You have to boot up Microsoft Edge or Apple Safari and yes, search for Chrome in order to install it. This is sort of a pain. And sure, Google uses prompts on Google Search at times to try to ease such actions, but this is something many users explicitly do.
[…]
More broadly, the reality remains that what is going to break the dominance of Google Search is not going to be another search engine, it will be something tangential out of left field. As such, asking Google to sell/spin-off Chrome is seemingly irrelevant to the DoJ’s goal here. Perhaps if they forced a sale to a competitor that actually had the resources and will to support Chrome, but that would mean selling it to another tech giant, like Microsoft, or Apple, or Meta and there’s no way they want that – all of those companies are also under investigation for other forms of antitrust, market dominance, etc. Also, as the testimony from Apple and others has made clear in various trials, the main search competitor right now, Bing, simply isn’t good enough to replace Google even if they were offered more money to do so. Hell, even Microsoft admitted this! Perhaps after years of default placement and thus, usage, Bing would surpass Google, but the reality here remains that most people would probably just go back to using Google.
This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded?
Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they’re essentially a loss-generating product, that exist because they cancel out distribution costs that Google and Microsoft would otherwise have to pay other browsers.
But the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers[…]
Moreover, who would buy Google Chrome? It seems like the leading candidate would be Microsoft, who is still a monopolist on desktop, so that option might even be worse than the status quo.
It makes much more sense for Google to divest Android, which can make money via licensing and Google Play.
OpenAI building a search engine and buying Chrome after the DOJ forces Google to sell it would fracture Google’s search business overnight.
Josh Sisco and Leah Nylen (Hacker News):
Alphabet Inc.’s Google would be forced to unwind its partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic if a federal judge accepts the US Justice Department’s proposal to resolve a landmark antitrust case over online search.
I know one person who might jump at the chance to snap up the world’s leading portal to information for $20B, and who has access to the levers of government to force the sale to happen…
Update (2024-11-25): Nick Heer:
The full proposal (PDF) is a pretty easy read. One of the weirder ideas pitched by the Colorado side is to have Google “fund a nationwide advertising and education program” which may, among other things, “include reasonable, short-term incentive payments to users” who pick a non-Google search engine from the choice screen.
[…]
The D.O.J.’s theory of growth reinforcing quality and market dominance is sound, from what I understand, and Google does advantage Chrome in some key ways. Most directly related to this case is whether Chrome activity is connected to Google Search. Despite company executives explicitly denying using Chrome browsing data for ranking, a leak earlier this year confirmed Google does, indeed, consider Chrome views in its rankings.
There is also a setting labelled “Make searches and browsing better”, which automatically “sends URLs of the pages you visit” to Google for users of Chromium-based browsers. Google says this allows the company to “predict what sites you might visit next and to show you additional info about the page you’re visiting” which allows users to “browse faster because content is proactively loaded”.
[…]
I do not think Chrome can exist as a standalone company. I also do not think it makes sense for another company to own it, since any of those big enough to do so either have their own browsers — Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Edge — or would have the potential to create new anticompetitive problems, like if it were acquired by Meta.
Update (2024-11-26): Casey Newton:
In a blog post today, Google argued that the opposite is true. Kent Walker, the company’s chief legal officer, called it “a radical interventionist agenda” and a “staggering proposal [that] would hurt consumers and America’s global technological leadership.”
[…]
As I wrote Tuesday, I’m not fond of forcing Google to divest Chrome: it was built in house, and earned its spot as the most popular browser in the United States fairly: by being meaningfully better than its competition. No matter who owns and operates it, most US users will probably set Chrome’s search engine to Google. It’s hard to see that shaking up the search market too much.
Requiring Google to license search queries and results, on the other hand, could be transformative. Suddenly, Google’s rivals would have a more even footing on which to attempt to build better search products.
Update (2024-11-27): Michael Kan (via Nick Heer):
“We strongly urge the Court to consider remedies that improve search competition without harming independent browsers and browser engines,” a Mozilla spokesperson tells PCMag.
[…]
“The proposed remedies are designed to end Google’s unlawful practices and open up the market for rivals and new entrants to emerge,” the DOJ told the court. The problem is that Mozilla earns most of its revenue from royalty deals—nearly 86% in 2022—making Google the default Firefox browser search engine.
Previously:
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"why not address them directly?" - Monopolistic advantage and practices are realistically inevitable once a business becomes this dominant, and in Google's case are also a direct result of the intimate interlinking of various branches of its business. So how could this be addressed more directly than by imposing a forced separation of aspects of the business? Can you give an example of what you mean?
"This was stupid when they tried to do this to Microsoft 25 years ago"
No, what the government did back then worked. That's the opposite of stupid.
"If Google were forced to sell Chrome, who’d make the default web browser for Android?"
Optimally, there would be no default browser.
"Android can’t ship without a default browser"
Yes, it can.
"This proposal is kind of nuts since the only business model for web browsers is revenue share from search results"
Because of predatory pricing! That's the whole problem! This is like the cops trying to rescue a hostage, and the hostage refusing to be rescued because "I can't be free because I'm a hostage, and hostages are not free by definition!"
Yeah, but if you just come with us, you're not a hostage any longer, are you? If we go after the companies that give away browsers for free in order to manipulate the browser market, then maybe browsers won't be free anymore, and there will be an actual market?
But this whole discussion is pointless. None of this is going to happen. As soon as Trump takes over, all of this antitrust stuff is going to be over, and the attention is going to shift drastically.
Trump has already named Brendan Carr to head the FCC, which tells us what the focus is going to be. Think changes to Section 230, no more net neutrality, "TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE" because Trump doesn't like what they broadcast, etc. That's the kind of stuff his administration will focus on. Not antitrust. Bye bye Lina Khan, it was nice while it lasted.
@Graham I don’t have a specific example handy, but my recollection is that the main problem was around search and ads and with certain anti-competitive ads behaviors. I don’t see how selling Chrome addresses any of this. Google essentially had a monopoly before Chrome even existed.
@Plume How would divesting Google of Chrome or not having a default browser change any of that? The other browsers would still have the same business models. So would Chrome developed under a separate organization. I don’t see how any of this would lead to a market of non-free browsers.
"The other browsers would still have the same business models"
The other browser have that business model because there are subsidized free browsers from monopolists on the market. There used to be paid browsers before all the platform holders decided that they wanted to own that platform, and started giving away free browsers.
@Plume I bought iCab and OmniWeb, but there was never a time, even before Google existed, when paid browsers had meaningful marketshare. I don’t think that would change unless Apple, Microsoft, etc. are also forbidden from offering free browsers, which is never going to happen.
"there was never a time, even before Google existed, when paid browsers had meaningful marketshare"
Netscape Navigator was a paid browser. Opera was a paid browser. OmniWeb was a paid browser (and basically supported that whole company until Safari killed it). Mosaic, a free browser, lost market share to Netscape, a paid browser.
All of these companies had business plans that were based on selling software licenses to customers. Even later, when some of these companies started offering free non-commercial licenses, they still made money from business licenses.
It was only when the free browsers from platform owners came out that the paid browser market collapsed.
Though, to be fair, people generally did not actually buy a browser. Their ISPs made a bundling deal with Netscape or Microsoft, and you got the browser on an ISP-shipped CD.
Regardless, this meant that Netscape’s business was in selling software licenses, not in creeping on users.
@Plume Yes, there were paid browsers, but I don’t think most people used them. Netscape was free for non-commercial use, and probably many ignored that restriction. I’m not even sure these were self-supporting, as Netscape was selling server products, Omni was selling consulting and other apps, etc.
>Netscape was free for non-commercial use
I don’t believe that’s true. Netscape simply wasn’t usually bought in retail because your ISP gave you a copy.
"Netscape was free for non-commercial use"
It became free for non-commercial use, but was not originally. But even after it became free for non-commercial use, their business was selling software licenses, as Sören says. Only the free browsers from platform owners destroyed that market.
@Plume
Netscape announced in its first press release (October 13, 1994) that it would make Navigator available without charge to all non-commercial users, and beta versions of version 1.0 and 1.1 were freely downloadable in November 1994 and March 1995, with the full version 1.0 available in December 1994.
[…]
The “N” evaluation versions were identical to the commercial versions; the letter was intended as a reminder to people to pay for the browser once they felt they had tried it long enough and were satisfied with it. This distinction was formally dropped within a year of the initial release, and the full version of the browser continued to be made available for free online, with boxed versions available on floppy disks (and later CDs) in stores along with a period of phone support.
"The first few releases of the product were made available in "commercial" and "evaluation" versions; for example, version "1.0" and version "1.0N". The "N" evaluation versions were identical to the commercial versions; the letter was intended as a reminder to people to pay for the browser once they felt they had tried it long enough and were satisfied with it."
I think the "is the browser commercial or not" discussion is missing the key point. Google owning Chrome allows it to implant itself as default search engine, which is an essential factor in allowing it to then exploit that position to feed its ad business via control of both acquiring the valuable user data and then by a major channel of delivery of its (very commercial and monopolistic) ads.
@Graham Surely it helps, but I don’t see it as an essential factor. Google rose to search/ad dominance without Chrome, and it’s the default search engine in Safari and Firefox despite not owning them.
Leaving aside if selling Chrome is a good idea, who does DOJ think would buy it? I've seen Amazon, Microsoft and generative BS companies mooted. None of those seem any better to me!
"Google rose to search/ad dominance without Chrome"
Yeah, but that's how illegal monopolies work. You gain market dominance in one area, and then you use that market dominance to control another area. Google used the money and power from its search and ad business to dominate the browser business, which it now in return uses to sustain its market dominance in the search and ad business.
"it’s the default search engine in Safari and Firefox despite not owning them."
Because it pays for that placement, which is another thing that is under legal scrutiny.
@Plume Should it be illegal if you have a popular web site to offer a link to download the browser that you made?
How are you imagining this should work? The browsers are allowed to include default Google search but don’t get paid? They offer choices and get a TAC based on which one the user picks? No TAC for anyone (and kill Firefox)? I don’t see how any of these would really move the needle in the desired direction.
So the antitrust case against Google is that everybody gets free browsers. Ideally we should all be paying for web browsers, to protect competition.
"Should it be illegal if you have a popular web site to offer a link to download the browser that you made?"
If the website is a monopoly in a major market segment like search, and the link is to a predatorily priced browser, yes. That's the definition of anticompetitive practices, is it not?
"The browsers are allowed to include default Google search but don’t get paid?"
The potentially illegal thing here is not random browsers including Google search, but Google breaking antitrust laws with their exclusive agreements with browsers. So yes, they would be allowed to include default Google search.
"No TAC for anyone (and kill Firefox)?"
This would not kill Firefox.
"So the antitrust case against Google is that everybody gets free browsers"
Browsers are not really free. You pay for them with your data, with a lack of choice, with a lack of progress, and in general with an effed up market that screws everybody over.
@Plume Which “exclusive agreements with browsers” are you referring to? All the major browsers support multiple search engines. If they could still include default Google Search, what exactly would be changing?
As much as I would like to see Google lose market dominance, and for Chrome to go in a direction that isn't explicitly about Google expanding their control (e.g. manifest v2 deprecation), I'm not sure what this would accomplish. As others have said, Chrome would need a revenue source, and there isn't much out there other than selling your default search engine is, selling ad space, or invading your user's privacy and selling their data. The latter two are abhorrent, and the former would just put them back in bed with Google and still beholden to Google's interests.
@Plume I take no pleasure in making this argument, but basically no one will pay for a web browser in 2024. You and I might, but 99% of people will not. Back in the shareware Opera days where it was more techies than non-techies browsing the web, it was already a niche market. It would be an even smaller niche market today.
All that said, Google is gradually losing relevance as its search results flounder and get ever shittier, and AI eats its lunch. We're still at the beginning of that, but enshittification has been decaying Google for years now. So maybe we just need to wait.
Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that the reason search deals is the only revenue stream for web browsers is *because* of the monopoly practices of Google?
They use Chrome as a loss-leader and that creates an unfair competitive environment
@Manx Please explain your thinking there. Yes, Chrome is a loss leader, but if Google ceased to exist, I think Apple would still make Safari free and Microsoft would still make Edge free. Samsung would have its own free browser.
"Which “exclusive agreements with browsers” are you referring to?"
See the ruling in US vs Google:
"Google's browser agreements are exclusive insofar as they establish Google as the out- of-the-box default search engine. The Apple ISA requires that Google be preloaded as the exclusive default search engine on all Safari search access points in exchange for % revenue share. (...) The Mozilla RSA has a similar effect. Google is the default GSE on all Firefox search
access points, including the navigation bar and the homepage, among others."
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/f6ab5c368725101c/43d7c2a0-full.pdf
"If they could still include default Google Search, what exactly would be changing?"
This is the fundamental point of disagreement. Your position is that things just are the way they are, and government intervention won't change that. My assertion is that the current market is the result of anticompetitive behavior from monopolists, and that government intervention would, over time, create a more competitive market.
I don't know exactly what would happen if Google was broken up. I do know, however, that if Google is prevented from continuing its current anti-competitive behavior, other browsers and search engines would benefit. We know, for example, that browser choice screens have helped small browsers gain market share:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/eus-new-tech-laws-are-working-small-browsers-gain-market-share-2024-04-10/
I don't understand the idea that the status quo is like some kind of unchanging rule of nature, and that nothing will change anything.
Would browsers still default to Google as their search engine? I don't know. Some probably would, and others would not. The absence of Google's infinite money well would definitely allow smaller players to buy placements.
"no one will pay for a web browser in 2024"
Yes, but the reason for that is the current market, which is a result of anticompetitive behavior.
@Plume I don’t understand. You have an issue with the agreement that makes Google the default, but then you also said “they would be allowed to include default Google search.” So what did you mean by the quoted part? That they would be allowed to make Google the default but could only accept TAC from other companies? Or Google can pay them if the user opts in via a choice screen?
“Samsung would have its own free browser.”
Great, that’s already an increase in competition. Increasing competition is the point of antitrust
Plume is right too. Web browsers weren’t always free and when Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer, it allowed them to leverage their OS monopoly to embrace, extend, and extinguish a burgeoning market
That’s one of the biggest reasons Microsoft came under antitrust scrutiny and it makes perfect sense that the same would apply to Google right now
@Manx It looks to me like Samsung has already had its own browser since 2012. I still think that Plume is wrong and that browsers were effectively free from the beginning (WorldWideWeb, Mosaic, Netscape). The issue with Microsoft wasn’t just that IE was free but that they forbade OEMs from bundling Netscape.
Microsoft did more than bundle IE, they tried to build it into the desktop at one point, so they could claim Windows wouldn't work without it.
I dimly remember that Netscape was shareware when I first encountered it. I also remember wondering why it was so much better than xMosaic that it was worth paying for. At the time, the web was so slow that I preferred gopher, ftp, and used lynx when I had to access the web.
@Old Unix Geek I think the “build it into the desktop” was basically like what Apple did with WebKit. They had a built-in HTML rendering framework to use as a help viewer and so the mail client and third-party apps could display HTML content and because some of the UI was HTML-based. It now seems quaint that people were upset with that part.
On top of what Michael said, Apple went farther than Microsoft ever did and outright forbade third party browsers on iOS.
@Bri - forbade third party browser **engines** on iOS. Other browsers are totally fine as long as they used WebKit.
That makes a lot of sense for lots of reasons. One of them being that browsers are compiling executable code on the fly, and therefore must be extra trustworthy.
@Michael: yes, but at the time it was a big deal because it was used to argue that Windows couldn't work without it. It was an artificial thing because at the time Windows already had a help system that didn't use HTML. Indeed, at the time, SGML was the rage, XML and HTML being derivatives of it, IIRC. Also the first versions of IE came separately from Windows 95... that changed with 98.
If you remember, KDE also went with the single click paradigm for starting apps, because it was being "Webby", and that's where KHTML / Webkit started.
@Someone else: "compiling executable code on the fly, and therefore must be extra trustworthy." Bollocks, an interpreter is just as dangerous -- see Pegasus' hack of JBIG2 in Xpdf on iOS.
Not just Google: Apple fights to keep DOJ antitrust suit from reaching trial.
"You have an issue with the agreement that makes Google the default, but then you also said “they would be allowed to include default Google search.”"
The restriction is on Google, not on browser makers. Google should not be allowed to use one monopoly to create another one, but browser manufacturers are allowed to do whatever they want with their browsers.
"I still think that Plume is wrong and that browsers were effectively free from the beginning"
"Effectively free" is not the same as "free", because the former means a company still makes revenue with a product, and the latter means they don't. Office is "effectively free", but that doesn't mean Microsoft doesn't make money with it. Browsers only became truly free with platform holders subsidizing their development with money made from their monopolies. The money has to come from *somewhere.*
1994: Release of Netscape Navigator
1995: IPO, growth phase, revenue doubles every quarter
1996: IE is available as a free download after being released in the paid Windows 95 Plus Pack a year earlier
1997: Netscape growth stops, first layoffs
1998: Netscape Navigator is now free
Correlation is not causation, but this is either a clear case of monopolistic behavior killing a nascent market, or it's the world's most curious coincidence.
I think the fact that some people can't even imagine an OS that hasn't a built in browser made by the same vendor is argument enough for separation of the two.
I can see why Gruber pretends it would be an impossibility, once Google have to split Apple is surely next in line. But we need not look further than Samsung or any of the Chinese phones to see that people other than Google can provide a browser (and indeed be completely separated from Google products)
Or Linux.
Learned helplessness writ large.
Break this shit up
@Plume Could you answer the other questions about TAC?
I don’t think Office is effectively free in the same way at all.
I think it’s a mistake to look at the first couple VC-funded years of a 30-year period and extrapolate that there was naturally going to be a long-term vibrant market of non-free products. I mean, sure, if there had been a rule that no platform holder was able to include a browser maybe things would have been different. Likewise, we would have more choices now, as we once did, if OS vendors were forbidden from integrating menu bar clocks and dock/palette application launchers and e-mail clients. I did like it when those areas were more of a free-for-all. Somewhere in there is a line where integration makes sense and enforcing a market would be ridiculous.
Anyway, zooming out, if you want a better market for browsers, I think something along the lines of mandatory choice screens would help a lot more than changing the ownership of one particular browser.
"Could you answer the other questions about TAC?"
This one?
"That they would be allowed to make Google the default but could only accept TAC from other companies?"
From some other companies. Google isn't the only monopolist.
"I don’t think Office is effectively free in the same way at all."
You can go to microsoft365.com, log in, and use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Why is that not free in the same way?
"Likewise, we would have more choices now, as we once did, if OS vendors were forbidden from integrating menu bar clocks and dock/palette application launchers and e-mail clients (...) Somewhere in there is a line where integration makes sense and enforcing a market would be ridiculous"
It's not just about whether integration makes sense. Browsers create a unique problem because they are the runtime on which modern computing exists. They are the gatekeepers. The problems caused by Chrome's dominance are follow-on effects of that, like the inability of other search providers to gain traction even when they offer good services.
It's closer to the App Store discussion than to menu bar clocks.
"I think something along the lines of mandatory choice screens would help a lot more than changing the ownership of one particular browser."
Yes, of course. Changing the ownership of one particular browser would do very little. But I'm assuming that the DOJ's goal would not have been to do this one thing and then stop.
@Plume So no browser should be able to accept payments from Google Search (or Bing?), but they could from Kagi? I think this would just mean that any browser not built as a loss leader by a mega corp would no longer be able to fund its development.
The Web version of Office does not offer the same experience as the app, whereas the free/evaluation versions of Netscape were equivalent to the paid.
I agree about browsers being the runtime, but I don’t think that Chrome’s dominance is the main reason why Google Search is so dominant. If you look at the timeline, Chrome and Bing came out around the same time, back when IE still had dominant marketshare, yet Microsoft was not really able to establish it as a strong Google competitor. A search provider choice screen might help, but I’m skeptical given that the then dominant browser forcing Bing as the default search engine didn’t do much.
"So no browser should be able to accept payments from Google Search (or Bing?), but they could from Kagi?"
Yes.
"I think this would just mean that any browser not built as a loss leader by a mega corp would no longer be able to fund its development."
You're assuming that nothing will change if monopolists are forced to stop distorting the market. You're assuming that all that will happen is that Google's money will disappear, and everything else will remain unchanged. This does not seem plausible to me.
"The Web version of Office does not offer the same experience as the app"
This is a meaningless distinction for 99% of people. I don't know anyone at work who bothers with installing the native version. The web version is Office now for the vast majority of people.
"Chrome and Bing came out around the same time, back when IE still had dominant marketshare"
That was also back when Google's dominance was still based on its search result quality. Bing's poor results were a meme at the time. Google gained its monopoly fairly, with an overwhelmingly good product. They're *maintaining* it unfairly.
@Plume I’m assuming that Apple and Microsoft would keep developing their browsers and giving them away for free even without funding from Google. So the market would still be distorted.
Google gained its monopoly fairly, with an overwhelmingly good product. They're *maintaining* it unfairly.
That’s a reasonable argument. Currently, I think that search is worse in general but that Google’s relative quality is not obviously worse. It may be that they are getting whacked for an insurance policy that they didn’t yet need.
So… search monopoly requires not changes to search, but giving up a web browser? Why? Google was already the dominant search provider before Chrome was ever released?!!?
Also worth noting, free web browsers on the market before Chrome was ever a product:
Internet Explorer
Netscape Navigator
Mozilla
Firefox
Camino
Safari
Opera (went fully free to use in 2005
Shiira
K-Meleon
…
I could keep going, but let's be honest, the market had long since shifted to free web browsers. Yes, there were occasional commercially sold web browsers still around (I paid for both an iCab desktop license and mobile license as one example), but come on.
Here's my thought for actually fixing things. Why not bar Google from making deals for Chrome required to be installed on Android devices? As in, no reason a Galaxy phone should be forced to ship with Chrome and Samsung Browser, especially since the former cannot be uninstalled fully, merely disabled. In fact, let's say even if Chrome is preinstalled, how about allowing consumers to uninstall it once a different web browser has been installed?
And why not prompt the user for which search engine they want to use? In any given web browser? Wouldn't that help diversity for search? As a heavy Android user, I neither use Chrome nor do I use Google search generally, but I don't think blocking Google from making a web browser makes much sense. Well, if we go down this route, I'd argue Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon should be blocked as well. But that's probably not feasible.
"I’m assuming that Apple and Microsoft would keep developing their browsers and giving them away for free even"
Yes, I agree: "I'm assuming that the DOJ's goal would not have been to do this one thing and then stop."
"Why not bar Google from making deals for Chrome required to be installed on Android devices?"
Those are all also good ideas. I don't think that just forcing Google to sell Chrome is going to fix all problems. I do, however, think that it would move us one step towards a better situation, both in the browser market and in the search engine market (and probably also in the online ads market).
Maybe I'm getting too cynical about big tech at this point, but my reaction to "Who would want to buy Chrome if Google is forced to sell it?" is "Who cares?". Why should software built on an abusive or illegal business model be protected just because it's popular?
(This reminds me of when people woulda argue against universal health care in the US because it would put the health insurance companies out of business.)
@Rob I'm cynical too, but you can't just pull the rug out from under people. I'd be fine putting insurance companies out of business eventually, but not instantly since they have employees and suppliers who depend on their business. If Chrome is to become the latest Google cancelled product, a whole bunch of people are going to need to migrate browsers, including on managed computers and … Chromebooks (!). Not to mention how much runs on Chromium: from MS Edge and Electron apps to Telsa dashboards (I think I read?). MS, for example, contributes, but not enough that Google could just leave (and Google hosts the canonical bug tracker, etc).
@Michael IIRC "Active Desktop" was when IE4 was tightly introduced into Windows 95 (OSR2.5, was it?) and in fact if you knew what you were doing you could carefully avoid it and therefore the entire IE4 upgrade; in fact some programs were known to break if you did that upgrade. I think it's different when the HTML renderer is introduced as a feature of the OS and the browser is just a user of that renderer, even if the point of introduction of both features is entirely coincidental. But the IE4 force push was not that, it was a calculated move, regardless of how it might have benefited subsequent features of Windows (including HTML help, yes, which many, many devs absolutely despised compared to the good old "WinHelp").
Anyway I think @Plume is broadly right here, with the caveat that it's not so much free browsers that are the problem, but rather the business models that get them there. Google shouldn't use its platform to promote Chrome *and* it shouldn't use Chrome or deals with other browsers to promote Google and advantage Google, because that's an obvious abuse of dominance. Chrome can grow organically; Google search can grow organically; both can not be used for leverage of the other.
@Someone else
Compelling as in Apple propped up their failing browser that a large contingent of Mac users outright refused to use and pretty much all Windows users refused to use (if anyone else remembers Safari for Windows). This was about controlling the ecosystem, not about security. Without the iOS mandate, Safari might actually be dead.
In the Google App browser on iOS, Google now inserts links to Google into people's websites.
"We’ve created a new feature called Page Annotation in the Google App browser for iOS. It extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line. When the user clicks on the highlighted entity, it will direct the user to the search result page for this entity."
https://9to5google.com/2024/11/25/google-ios-app-link-annotations-search/
> I think it's different when the HTML renderer is introduced as a feature of the OS and the browser is just a user of that renderer, even if the point of introduction of both features is entirely coincidental. But the IE4 force push was not that, it was a calculated move, regardless of how it might have benefited subsequent features of Windows
Retroactively, that’s certainly true — they argued that IE can’t be removed because so much of the OS relies on it.
I’m not sure it was _originally_ true during development, though. It’s plausible to me that they saw an opportunity to make the Windows UI more dynamic, and took it. The update also included various other improvements, such as a side bar in Explorer, Quick Launch, etc., so to say it was mostly a trojan horse to increase lock-in might be simplistic. (As for Active Desktop, and Channels specifically, this was also a bit of an hype. See PointCast.)
