I wish I could get found guilty and still be able to negotiate on equal footing with the prosecution about what my punishment was going to be.
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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Chrome is the exact thing they shouldn't keep. Their main weapon together with the search engine.
Anything but Chrome.
Can we just stop and appreciate for a moment what a fucking outrage it is that Google is allowed to negotiate its own punishment at all?
You are allowed to suggest sentencing. This isn’t preferential treatment to Google. Of course, the judge doesn’t have to listen to anybody’s suggestions, but you are definitely allowed to make them.
"Look I'm guilty as fuck. However, hear me out. I totally learned my lesson and believe that an appropriate punishment of you allowing me to continue my, let's say 'less than legal', business practices is a great punishment! And before you say it, I know! I know! I can also alter the way we operate with one of our millions of partners in a way that will yet again benefit me somehow and skirt legal ramifications for another 25 years. But look on the bright side, I don't want to do any of this...you're forcing me to do it!"
They can keep chrome if they open source everything and remove all tracking, telemetry, and calling home of any sort, artificial crippling of addons via manifestV3, stop blocking blockers, stop injecting ads, stop breaking APIs, stop asynchronous and default DNS, stop forcing safebrowsing (URL monitoring).
What else have I missed?
They would still have disproportionate control over web standards. They should not be allowed to keep Chrome/Chromium under any circumstances.
I still don’t see how a standalone web browser survives financially. It seems like Firefox is always near death and has to make compromising decisions. Do you have any thoughts on how this ought to work?
I think it would thrive under a non-profit like the Linux foundation. It doesn't need to make money. It's a critical piece of our tech infrastructure, just like Linux, openssl and other open source projects. Having it in the hands of an ad company whose interests are against the open internet and open standards is not okay.
I think we might have to get used to the idea of paying for software again, if we want to sustain the development of good quality, privacy respecting products
This point comes up a lot, but how does Photoshop survive? If chrome were split, Im sure they would find ways to make it work.
Corporate licensing would probably be the #1 way they could survive easily. The general public sees alternatives as "junk" to the main thing when it comes to tech. This, imo, is why Firefox is near death.
Now idk if the licensing route would be better or worse for us.
I too want to know more about this. Also, what happens to all the Chromium based browsers once Google doesn't maintain it?
..... And most importantly, stop making it default browser in the most popular OS in the planet.
pushing web standards in their user-hostile favour
I’m guessing they would not be interested in keeping Chrome under those conditions. Those are all things that give them leverage, which is the reason they need to split
It's a miracle that Google botched messengers, Google+, cloud ('member app engine?). They could have been even more dominant. I still like them more than MS and FB.
Yeah, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. It's just another asshole.
Google, over the past few years has notably getting worse. Apps that always worked flawlessly lately started getting buggy. YouTube app on Android now crashes near daily, Gmail is suddenly riddled with bugs... It wasn't like this.
Google was a software / tech company that started dabbling in ads to make money. This change toe company to what it is now, an ad company that does a bit of tech on the side.
Google Chrome is now the new ie6 and though it sucks in different ways from ie6, at the core the problem is the same
Google and Microsoft are really the same company, it's just that (for now, still) Google's software sucks less
Chrome itself is rated 4.1 in Play Store, while Firefox is rated 4.6. Google Chrome dominance, at this point, is a consequence of monopolistic practices and not user preference. They are now using their predominant position in the browser market to apply ad technologies that their users rightly didn't ask for, and they don't like it.
Revanced will fix your youtube on Android problems
Edit:
Link to revanced: https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/releases
Have you tried NewPipe? YouTube changed the API a few times, and it broke for a day. Otherwise, it's excellent. I had trouble with Google Pay lately, which is really frustrating, I reverted to cash. No trouble with Chrome or Gmail on Android.
PipePipe another fork of newpipe is my go to
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We don’t need to pay bribes to stay the default search engine so long as we get to keep making the monopolist browser that bans adblockers.
no.
FFS the Chrome thing is nothing even. Who would even want it?
Chrome, as the damn-near-monopoly rendering engine, gives Google hegemony over web standards. That's incredibly valuable because it puts them in a position to (e.g.) inflict DRM on the world.
Fair point.
it's a huge deal for google. they control the browser used by the vast majority of users, and the engine behind the one (such as edge, opera, vivaldi, etc) used by still more. they rely on those users to see and interact with ads to make money.
besides the obvious--driving traffic to their web properties that have their ads; they get to siphon off all that sweet user data which makes their ads 'more valuable', and control addon functionality and restrictions as well as the primary 'marketplace' where those addons come from. their ultimate goal of killing off ad blockers completely, the limits mv3 puts on adblockers is just the next step in that direction.
should a third-party acquire control over chrome's development, mv3 gets shredded. restrictions and limitations on adblockers get scaled-back or reverted outright.
should a third-party acquire control over chrome's development, mv3 gets shredded. restrictions and limitations on adblockers get scaled-back or reverted outright.
That is far too optimistic. If the courts force a sale then a for profit company will but it expecting a return on investment. Which very likely means more monetisation efforts like embedding ads or even more tracking built into it. It is a fantasy to think who ever gets it will scale anything you dislike about it back.
I'd be interested in what restrictions are between those two companies, because it seems to me like there'd be a lot of money in making Chrome what Google wants it to be.
I'm already out. Linux desktop, Firefox browser. It's enough for me. Fuck MS, fuck Google, fuck Apple.
Unless they monetize the wanted Features Like Ad-Blocking. 10$/Month for No Ads everywhere is a Deal that many people would probably Take. Sponsorblock, DeArrow, Video Background Player Fix, there are many QoL Improvements that a Browser Company might include to sell a Browser Subscription or likewise
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it also allows them to push web standards in whatever direction they feel like
All good points, but even without Chrome they became one of the biggest companies in the history of Earth. Even without Chrome they'll still have Android and will undoubtedly spit out a Chromev2 browser experience that suckers will flock to - and even without Chrome they'll still likely control all of that search traffic.
Hey if it kills their fingerprinting plans, I'm all for it, but are they going to be prevented from developing a browser? That's like not being allowed to develop a car. Which - again, fine by me, but still unlikely.
Their desperation to hold onto it speaks volumes about how valuable it is to them. I’m sure they get tons of juicy browsing data that they don’t want to give up.
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It's a good question because maintaining a modern web browser is a complicated and expensive project, which any potential buyer would have to sustain financially somehow. Chrome without the integrated ad service business would probably be highly unprofitable - so why would any business take it on?
The only real answer I can come up with is pretty ugly: data mining. Lots of services are dependent on Chrome that can't just move to a new platform on short notice. Chrome is not just the web browser, it's also the web engine for most mobile apps (a lot of apps are just stripped-down Chrome with a hard-coded server target).
Chrome has basically sucked all the air out of the room for other browser projects, so maybe taking it away from Google will create some space for new projects to grow... but it's hard to see any of them becoming well-developed and trustworthy for things like health data, government services, financial transactions &etc anytime soon.
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