this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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Note: Original report by Bloomberg, article by Reuters proxied by Neuters to bypass paywall.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

They shutting force then to stop the advertising branch too

[–] samus12345 39 points 1 day ago

They can just wait it out until it becomes the corpo-friendly Dept. of Injustice on Jan. 20th.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I‘ve actually when something like this will happen. A few years ago German energy providers and distributors needed to split, because it gives you an unfair advantage if you own both. Whole companies were split in two. People working for years together would no longer work together. In the end consumer were much better off after the split. I feel the same way with internet browser. It is unfair if you own the infrastructure (Chrome, energy grid) and the services that run on it (YouTube, power plants).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

The US did this to AT&T. It was broken up into dozens of "baby bells". Then it gradually bought them all back up and now it's as big as it ever was

[–] Inucune 9 points 21 hours ago

Bell telephone. AT&T was one of the resulting companies.

[–] DacoTaco 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Thats stupid of the US to not block the merges again then.. :p

[–] [email protected] 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Well this process also spawned Verizon, so they do have legitimate competition now and that's what matters to antitrust actions

[–] DacoTaco 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Very true, but in due time verizon could also be bought. Hence fcc should technically block it, like the nvidia and arm merge.
Or microsoft and activision ( which was heavily contested ).
Both were heavily contested worldwide

[–] normalexit 68 points 2 days ago (8 children)

This seems like a sensible consumer protection to not let the ad company control the biggest web browser. I won't hold my breath, but I'm glad they are trying something.

AWS should also be split from Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

AWS is amazing's money maker, they might as well just sell Amazon and keep AWS lol

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[–] Etterra 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Better hurry, Trump's rubber stamp DOJ will kill this faster than a cop encountering a dog.

[–] capital 4 points 1 day ago

For the right price.

[–] [email protected] 136 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Lit. It's a good ask although it's not clear what separation means here. Not going to hold my breath, the big corpos seem to usually win these kind of games.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Chrome is now owned by a company, owned by a company, owned by another company, that is owned by Google.

[–] WhatAmLemmy 71 points 2 days ago (4 children)

And even in the case where there is actual separation, and competition, it will only be temporary!

see history of telco consolidation after a monopoly breakup in 1984

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Chrome is now owned by a separate conpany with the same major stock holders.

[–] Eldritch 41 points 2 days ago

It's like they're a company pretending to be another company, disguised as another company. Tropic Thunder all the way down.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And whoever buys it won't also have some kind of ulterior motive? Chrome isn't likely to be a money-maker on its own. If it were, Firefox would have less trouble staying afloat. Anyone who buys Chrome most likely will have plans for it that are no more in the end-user's best interest than Google's.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not about dispelling any ulterior motive. The idea of anti-monopoly enforcement actions is that if the "business ecosystem" is good and healthy, then other companies who don't own Chrome will be able to compete with whoever owns Chrome, giving the consumer choice that people who like the free market say will reduce consumer exploitation. (If you can't tell from my tone, I am dubious, at best, of this logic)

[–] SquatDingloid 9 points 1 day ago

Yeah any company controlled by the rich will act immorally

We can at least make sure it's multiple companies who will fight each other instead of one supreme leader megacorp

[–] [email protected] 100 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Google will bribe trump and this'll be undone immediately

[–] Lost_My_Mind 94 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Google is such a good company, one the best. Everybody says it. I was just talking to John Google the other day, and he tells me, no really he did, he tells me we're going to do amazing things together. Oogles of googles. That's what we'll sell. Everybody will know about google by this time next year. It's true.

[–] wreckedcarzz 1 points 1 day ago

Oogles of googles

Google: furiously writing down cereal ideas

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (3 children)

You forgot the unrelated rant in the middle about toasters being too dark these days or some shit.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That would be the logical thing according to common sense and probably according to pichai a few weeks ago, but trump just nominated an anti big tech and musk friend to the FCC. musk is behind almost everybody in ai and autonomous cars so he'll definitely push to hamper all competitors.

Sure, we don't know how far would they go or how long will musk keep having white house influence and I personally think breaking up google is now off the table, but I don't think they will get off the hook too easily.

So surely a very big bribe.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago (4 children)

If this happens, I'd be interested in seeing how this effects ChromeOS. I don't use it but my mom does.

Also, if you're confused as to why ChromeOS would be effected, while it's based on Gentoo Linux, ChromeOS uses a modified version of Chrome as it's Desktop Environment.

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[–] very_well_lost 53 points 2 days ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If you're talking about edge browser, edge is chrome.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (12 children)

Google: Sure, we'll sell it to anyone who pays off our Russian Govt fine.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

How do you force someone to sell something thats open source?

Can the government please force me to sell my open source software too? If they could be my sales department, I'd love that. Pretty please.

[–] btaf45 2 points 10 hours ago

I don't see how a "Chrome" company would make any money. Now if the Chrome Company also owned ChromeOS and Chromebooks that might be interesting. But it could also be bad, because such a company would probably want to take a cut of every Chromebook in order to actually make money.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Chromium is open source, Google bases their Chrome off of it, but Chrome is not open source.

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