If they’re allowed to choose who they sell it to this won’t change anything
Sell it to Mozilla so they can make it uninstall itself and install Firefox instead in the next update
imagine they sell it so some random homeless guy in Australia for 1 cent
I think they should sell it to me.
4 $ Final Offer
Too much for me, I’m out 🏳️
They should force it to become a worker cooperative. It’s the only solution that doesn’t allow for corruption
Nationalize?
For a lot of things yes.
However I do not want to use a browser developed by the US gov tyvm
how about the tuvalu government?
My comment is more in line with the corruption aspect. As much as I think they deserve it, giving it to the employees would be more akin to them winning the lottery. In the space of a year, they will have gone public, shareholders would have stormed in and we would be at square one.
Nationalisation at least has a chance of getting rid of the money corruption aspect. Sadly, the three letter agencies are probably deep in every browser already so I don’t think any solution takes care of that.
I understand your point though. Personally, I will never use chrome no matter what happens, ha.
Yep, nationalize everything that’s essential or at least offer a nationalized alternative and let the private sector try to compete.
I literally salivate at the thought of it happening to the telecom industries.
brOURser comrade.
What company could actually afford to buy it other than Google, Meta, or Amazon? Unless they are forced to sell it at a loss, which is fine with me.
By “sell,” they could also mean ending up having Chrome just split off from Google, as a new, independent entity that is its own company, without anybody needing to buy it in the first place.
How exactly is this company going to make any money?
I assume by continuing to sell data.
Selling user data, selling ad placement, subscriptions for paid services, enterprise-grade support contracts, and the like.
They could also take an approach similar to Google, branching back out from being just a browser into a suite of related tools that Chrome can then convince users to switch to (similar to how Chrome gets users to not just use Google search, but also services like Gmail too.)
The judge would immediately shut that down for creative avoidance. This is an order to sell, not break up. The DOJ specifically indicated behavioural remedies in this case, meaning Google must not remain in control of Chrome.
Don’t ya love it when people comment saying something that they think must be true as if it were actually true, without having the slightest idea?
This is an order to sell, not break up.
Currently, it’s still recommended actions to the court. Nothing has actually been finalized in terms of what they’re going to actually end up trying to make Google do.
Google must not remain in control of Chrome.
While divestiture is likely, they could also spin-off, split-off, or carve-out, which carry completely different implications for Google, but are still an option if they are unable to convince the court to make Google do their original preferred choice.
A split-off could prevent Google from retaining shares in the new company without sacrificing shares in Google itself, and a carve-out could still allow them to “sell” it, but via shares sold in an IPO instead of having to get any actual buyout from another corporation.
Elon Musk
Oracle, sun, tencent, tita…
Broadcom
oracle would create MANGO (Microsoft,Apple,nvidia,google and Oracle)
Hear me out… Valve
With all due respect for Valve, they don’t need this. They exist in their niche, and they’re exceptionally good at doing their work
Chromium engine for half life 3
Valve already use CEF extensively in their client
Microsoft is probably drooling at the prospect. They’ve been trying to get that IE monopoly back since this happened to them.
ABOUT FUCKING TIME!
Hey look, some boomers who don’t understand tech are trying to do a thing with a tech company. Sell Chrome? What a stupid idea.
I’m afraid that this is a terrible take. There is nothing to stop them from making it into a separate company. It would break the monopoly because the same people making the browser won’t be the ones earning the ad revenue.
How does Chrome the company make money?
That isn’t the point, is it? Why does the government and the people care about the profits of some company?
How do you sell something with no value. It’s a stupid premise.
It is the point. There is no benefit to us, as in the world, if this were to happen.
It’s pretty clear that you don’t understand what antitrust is about. I might suggest you read the Wikipedia article before commenting further. Also you should maybe take a moment to consider why you are taking the side of Google, a terrible and abusive company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. They don’t need your support.
Pass. I’m not taking sides, I’m looking at the blowback of such a stupid decision. Maybe you should research how important chromium is to open source and stop riding the blanket antitrust chubby.
LOL chromium is not important, it isn’t. I know you want it to be, but it’s not. There are plenty of alternatives out there, Firefox being the most obvious one. Really, stop simping for Daddy Google. You sound like an edgy teen.
We should nationalize it
Maybe, yes.
Found the Google investor.
sell it to Microsoft so they can finally have a web browser that people use
Microsoft run Chrome clone? But they already have Edge
Which no one willingly uses
Unless you’re at a company using Microsoft services, where you have no choice, other than chrome (at my company), which hot take, is worse than edge.
I use it and love it tbh
How fucking dare you have an opinion!
I just used my brain this time. Not again!
You need to get out more
Like what?
it was good at launch, but they’ve added so much bloat
Yes, the anti-trust lawsuit should culminate in one part of a tech giant being sold to another tech giant.
what else would happen
Never again
Imagine where the software industry would be without all the lost productivity because of MSIE quirks.
Yeah, see all this stuff happening between now and inauguration day. See, we did something. Too little, too late. If there are ever free and fair elections in this country, and the Democrats return to power, they better get their fucking shit together. The dismantling of the Federal government will be almost impossible to reverse.
This is the last antitrust win we’ll get for years, isn’t it?
I know Trump doesn’t like Big Tech, but I doubt his admin will punish them meaningfully, but just rail about censorship.
Our govt is pay for play at this point, I struggle to see anything like this going through, especially so close to a new AG appointment.
This isn’t a win I think. They are yet to meet in the court with Google.
The DOJ will file a revised version of its proposals in early March, before the government and Google return to the DC District Court in April for a two-week remedies trial.
Microshit treatment incoming IMHO
People larp these headlines too much
I keep saying this. In 2 months all this antitrust stuff goes out the window. If people actually bothered to show up on 11/5 Kahn and co could actually get some wins for the American people. Instead, we’re going to get more monopolies shoved down our throats.
Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, says the DOJ is pushing “a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.”
I’m honestly curious how this would “harm Americans”.
Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer sounds like Donald Trump
I fear this is exactly who they’re courting.
How does chrome make money? It uses ads from Google, chrome on it’s own is not a business.
Say you buy chrome, you have to options
-
Ads built into chrome itself (when you’re in the settings menu, homepage, reading a PDF, playing the dino game)
-
Force your own default search engine, or get a company like Google or Bing to pay you for the privilege of being a default search engine.
Neither of these options are better than the status quo
-
That statement is technically true.
The billionaire owners are Americans.
Everyone really does need to have that at the forefront of their mind. When the C-suit, wall street, and politicians talk about “Americans” they aren’t talking about us schlubs.
The corporations are people too!
I refuse to call any Billionaires Americans. A billionaire in America has far more in common with a billionaire in Ireland or France than with working class Americans. They don’t use our schools, drink our water, drive our roads, or rely on our safety nets. They don’t take out the trash, do their laundry, wait 6 months for a doctor’s appointment, or stress over defunding their retirement to pay for needed medication.
Billionaire involvement in politics should be considered foreign interference. Of course AIPAC is foreign interference too, but apparently that’s not a problem either.
Google pretending they have any other nationality other then “the global internet” is cute in a disgusting way.
It harms wealthy asshole Americans at Google.
The same ruling would ban Google from paying other browsers to make Google the default search engine.
This would kill Firefox and make Chromium the only browser engine that’s left.That’s really sad…
They should force google to kick sundar, the harmful thing, what made all google software, and services shit since it is the ceo…
If you think Sundar is bad, just wait to see who Wall Street picks to replace him.
I’m ok with google going the way of bed bath and beyond or red lobster.
I don’t wanna live in a world without scented bath oils, cheese biscuits, and gmail!
Nor I, but wall street sadly is full of people who are literal sociopaths and would happily watch you get chopped into pieces while you’re still breathing, sipping a cocktail the whole time. Or at least that’s what they do to companies.
What the what?
“sell your browser, that’ll limit your search monopoly”
. . . HAH?
It has 67% market share, and the default search is Google.
So it is on firefox as well . . ? And also with Edge, for those poor bastards.
Why not just force them to pick a different default? Or something meaningful like splitting them out of Alphabet entirely? Or stop sucking? Okay, well that last one may be hard to administrate.
It is on FF and Edge because Google pays them a ton of money. Every person who chooses Chrome instead of FF is more money for Google because they don’t need to pay themselves to make Google the default.
A fair point, though “a ton of money” is essentially 1% of their net profits for the year. Selling Chrome to someone who gets another .5% is not going to do anything at all.
Who would buy this and how would they monetize it? In browser ads? A freemium paid model to remove the ads?
I’ll bid $3.50 just to GPL it.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/
It’s already under BSD license
Sure, but GPL would prevent the Chrome tracking addons and other pleasant closed-source paraphernalia (the difference between Chrome and Chromium)
Isn’t the BSD licence more open though?
BSD is more open towards being closed.
Big doubt anything actually happens.
Admittedly, I don’t know enough about monopolies and antitrust laws to know how much this matters. Can someone ELI5 this and give us more info?
Why is everyone acting like this is a thing that will happen? All they have to do is wait roughly 90 days and it’ll all go away.
