News Google may be forced to sell its Chrome browser due to monopoly complaints — potential $20 billion sale if approved by a judge

[Admin]

Google accuses the Department of Justice of having a ‘radical agenda’ in response to a report that claims a forced sell-off of Chrome is on the table.

Google may be forced to sell its Chrome browser due to monopoly complaints — potential $20 billion sale if approved by a judge : Read more

 

[EzzyB]

I always thought that using a browser made by Google was right up there with using anti-virus software made by Russians is just not a very smart thing to do.

 

[derekullo]

I've stuck with Firefox ever since Noscript came out and never looked back!

 

[tommo1982]

I agree with Google on one thing. Chrome is essential to its ecosystem, the same Safari is for Apple. Separating it from Google is silly, in my opinion. DOJ should ask Google to fix its search engine and YouTube algorithms. Either returns irrelevant results or not related to the query. It'd hurt Google as much as forcing it to sell Chrom, if not more.

 

[bigdragon]

I was fine with Chrome until Google started going on its anti-adblocker crusade. That's when it became clear that Google intended to abuse its portfolio to extract more revenue. The DOJ is right to step in here. I'd like to see them be more active in the tech space given how pervasive tracking and advertising have become.

 

[Giroro]

In the very least, if Google is allowed to keep forcing people to download ads to their home computers without moderation (and bandwidth isn't free), then it's only fair that Google be forced to let people upload anything they want to google's computers, without moderation, at Google's expense.
I would go one further and say Google should be forced to allow other users of their services to even have a realistic chance of finding and accessing that unmoderated content, uploaded by random nobodies. No more snowballing users onto whichever company is biggest, or who's buying the most ads.

Similarly take action on all other data. If Google want's unlimited access to all private user data/files/location/voice/video on and off the internet, then all of Google's private proprietary data about the company, it's algorithms, and it's executives should be made publicly available. Two Way Street. See how they like it.
Would that ruin Google? Yes, probably. That's kinda the whole point of breaking up a monopoly.

Or, better yet, any given government could declare Google's extreme hoard of aggregated data of its citizens a risk to their national security, and severely limit who is allowed to access that data, and how it can be used - even within Google's own company/services. That could be fun.

 

[chaz_music]

I believe a lot of people forget that Microsoft Edge is also based on Chrome. They have managed to garner a huge part of the browser market with the exception of a few smaller payers: Safari, Firefox, Opera, and others.

Google has been a good company for many years and it managed to eat Yahoo's lunch. Once that was over, they started acting like bad stewards and putting irrelevant search results based upon what business paid them to show, not relevancy. That is how monopolies tend to act. Once the competition is gone, force-feed the consumer things they don't want or charge them more for no improvement in quality. I think breaking off Chrome and Android would temporarily fix these ecosystems.

But that may be short term just like the Bell Telephone/ATT breakup: several years later two of the satellite re-merged all of the cellphone players back into Verizon and ATT. Mergers very rarely help the consumer but are famous for improving corporate profits. So corporate breakups often result in the entities merging again if it will provide strong stock market returns.

 

[purple_dragon]

I believe a lot of people forget that Microsoft Edge is also based on Chrome. They have managed to garner a huge part of the browser market with the exception of a few smaller payers: Safari, Firefox, Opera, and others.

Google has been a good company for many years and it managed to eat Yahoo's lunch. Once that was over, they started acting like bad stewards and putting irrelevant search results based upon what business paid them to show, not relevancy. That is how monopolies tend to act. Once the competition is gone, force-feed the consumer things they don't want or charge them more for no improvement in quality. I think breaking off Chrome and Android would temporarily fix these ecosystems.

But that may be short term just like the Bell Telephone/ATT breakup: several years later two of the satellite re-merged all of the cellphone players back into Verizon and ATT. Mergers very rarely help the consumer but are famous for improving corporate profits. So corporate breakups often result in the entities merging again if it will provide strong stock market returns.

Opera is also based on chromium. In reality, selling off google's search engine would do more to rein them in. While at the same time do less damage to their business. They haven't been a search engine for years, they are an ad business.

 

[vanadiel007]

I don't understand how a government agency could force a publicly traded Company to sell of part of it's business. If I were Google, I would simply close the Chrome project and revoke all licensing.
This would in turn mean other browsers like Microsoft Edge and various others who are based on Chromium, would have to be abandoned.

It would cause total chaos on the browser market and Google would reap the benefits of it as they are large enough to come up with a completely new browser to take even more market share.

It's clear to me the DOJ does not understand how business works. What's next, force Tesla to sell SpaceX because it has obtained an "illegal monopoly" on space flight?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I've stuck with Firefox ever since Noscript came out and never looked back!

I've never left FireFox, I was always a FireFox user since the old days.

Or, better yet, any given government could declare Google's extreme hoard of aggregated data of its citizens a risk to their national security, and severely limit who is allowed to access that data, and how it can be used - even within Google's own company/services. That could be fun.

Just make a new Rule/Regulation that declares ALL customer data held by these companies & data brokers to be "100% Illegal for Companies" to (Trade/Sell/Give Away/Share/Profit off of) w/o EXPLICIT consent from each individual person in writing on a contract from said person in a "Face to Face" situation that explicitly tells them what they are losing and why they are losing it along with what they will get in return.
No more "Online Consent" by hiding it the "Terms of Service" that nobody reads.

This "Wild West" with hoarding "Customers Data" needs to 100% stop and be turned into ILLEGAL property if they try to profit off of it.

We need all those carefully collected "Customers Data" to be DESTROYED and WIPED off the face of the Earth PERMANENTLY.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I don't understand how a government agency could force a publicly traded Company to sell of part of it's business. If I were Google, I would simply close the Chrome project and revoke all licensing.
This would in turn mean other browsers like Microsoft Edge and various others who are based on Chromium, would have to be abandoned.

It would cause total chaos on the browser market and Google would reap the benefits of it as they are large enough to come up with a completely new browser to take even more market share.

It's clear to me the DOJ does not understand how business works. What's next, force Tesla to sell SpaceX because it has obtained an "illegal monopoly" on space flight?

Are you genuinely unfamiliar with the concept of antitrust law, or just disagree with its application here?

Also, Edge and similar browsers are based off the open source Chromium project (which also forms the basis of Chrome). Google could pull the plug on Chrome tomorrow and the chromium-based browsers would likely be fine. Maybe Microsoft (and other purveyors of Chromium-based browsers) would have to hire some more devs, depending on how much they were relying on Google's ongoing contributions to Chromium vs that of other contributors and their own development.

 

[thesyndrome]

I don't think the DoJ realise how much google is integrated with web-browsing now, I work for a company that uses the Google ecosystem, where chromebooks are encouraged, everyone has a google email address, all of our services and subscriptions are accessed through SSO for our google accounts, the browser can be managed through Google Admin, and even our windows laptops now use GCPW (google credential provider for windows) to log in any sync with their google drive, all of this uses chrome as the glue in the middle to make everything seamless and work easily.
I don't think the politicians making these decisions remember what internet browsing was like before google stepped in; remember askjeeves? altavista? yahoo search? They were all terrible along with the dozens of other ones that were either incompetent or malicious, and this is just talking about search engines and ignoring the browser problem back then, like people stuck on AOL's terrible browser, internet explorer being temperamental and capricious, etc.
For years I've been using chrome and have firefox installed as a backup in case something goes wrong with chrome (which has been very rare). I don't look forward to going back to the wild west days of hunting around for things to use and saying "wow I hope THIS search engine/browser isn't complete ****!" and before people say to switch to the next most popular: who's to say this won't happen again with THAT browser when it gets popular enough?

While I'm ranting, honestly "anti-monopoly laws" have been a joke for a while now, not because I think monopolies should exist, but because certain companies seem to somehow completely sidestep them (Microsoft, Disney, Apple, not to mention pharmaceutical corporations) despite being far worse than a lot of the companies that do get targeted, and from the outside looking in it just seems like they are buying off politicians to ignore them.

 

[TJ Hooker]

While I'm ranting, honestly "anti-monopoly laws" have been a joke for a while now, not because I think monopolies should exist, but because certain companies seem to somehow completely sidestep them (Microsoft, Disney, Apple, not to mention pharmaceutical corporations) despite being far worse than a lot of the companies that do get targeted, and from the outside looking in it just seems like they are buying off politicians to ignore them.

All the companies you listed as examples of "completely sidestepping anti-monopoly laws" are currently in the process of being sued for antitrust violations (and all have lost and/or settled antitrust suits in the past).

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/25/tech/microsoft-teams-eu-antitrust/index.html

Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets

The Justice Department, joined by 16 other state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Apple for monopolization or attempted monopolization of smartphone markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

www.justice.gov

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litig...ntitrust-class-suit-by-tv-streaming-consumers