Comment by elmerfud
6 days ago
So I understand trying to break up monopolistic companies to provide better competition in the market which is generally better for the consumer as a whole. This strategy of saying Chrome should be sold off seems strange to me because unlike other monopolies Google's monopoly with Chrome is fundamentally different.
Since Chrome at its core is the open source chromium browser engine the ability for your competition to leverage what you do is already there. The dynamic here is fundamentally different than many other monopolies of the past due to this fact. It must be asked are people gravitating toward Chrome because they feel there is no other viable option to offer a similar experience or is it because they choose that because it feels to them to be the best choice to make in a free market.
In the context of Google's ad business the fact that chrome is open source has little bearing. Chrome is both massively popular and also a loss leader designed to further entrench Google's ad monopoly. If Chrome were broken off then a competitor in the ads space like Meta could purchase the search traffic instead which would force Google's ad business to be more competitive.
Is Meta or Microsoft buying Chrome a good outcome?
Why would either of those two be allowed to buy Chrome. Meta is just as much an ad business and quasi-monopoly as Google is. Microsoft has already been in legal trouble over browsers and is actively trying to recreate Google ad empire.
Governments are kinda stupid in these cases, but I think Google would be able to argue, if forced to sell, that neither of those two companies would improve the market situation.
Sell it to Opera, except they're Chinese now. Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, the co-founder of Opera and CEO of Vivaldi, should buy it, that would be a hilarious outcome.
My ideal outcome would be something like:
1) Chrome is spun out as a standalone entity. Google would originally have full ownership but be forced to sell down over time.
2) Google buys the Chrome traffic at a fair price
3) Apple sells their traffic to someone else, potentially an AI search player (Meta??)
4) MSFT makes a new browser in response to Chrome going closed source
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IMHO Microsoft yes, Meta no.
Microsoft wouldn't have a the kind of vertically integrated monopoly where they control both the internet properties and the browser used to access them.
Not really. If Chrome is forked they kill third party cookies and search ads remain king.
Only search has high propensity to buy right there from the interaction. Third party and even meta don't have that.
People gravitate towards Chrome in part because of Google’s heavy marketing of it. Whenever I sign into Gmail in Safari I get a pop up about a “better experience” awaiting me.
That is true in a valid point but install Windows sometimes and see how much it pushes you toward the edge browser. Which is chromium at its core but the experience it provides is not as good as Chrome even with all of Chrome's downsides.
So while I don't have the specific answer I think there is a much bigger question here of is it free market choice that is gravitated everyone here or is it monopolistic pressure that is squeezed out the competition. Microsoft is no small player in this space they're just the suckier player as they lost their crown with Internet explorer when they effectively owned the market too.
> That is true in a valid point but install Windows sometimes and see how much it pushes you toward the edge browser.
The difference here is that Microsoft's reputation is beyond ruined in this product category due to Internet Explorer.
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Google also turns every link tap in their iOS apps into an opportunity to upsell Chrome for iOS when it should just open the link with the user’s default browser.
I'm shocked that Apple hasn't cracked down on this process through App store reviews. It's such an awful experience.
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How else is Google supposed to "integrate" within iOS?
Safari and Messages etcetera link to within the closed Apple ecosystem - just like Windows. It can be between difficult to impossible to send an email or create a calendar item unless you use the iOS apps.
I'm definitely no Google fanboi but every answer being "Google are arseholes" feels dishonest.
The Chromium developer team absolutely kick arse and being open source is a true gift. Mozilla is badly failing to compete. Microsoft failed to compete with their first Edge rewrite, and now ironicalky MS "competes" using Chromium open source.
And why did Chromium have to split from WebKit? As an outsider it just looked like "because Apple don't want to play nice".
The story is always simplified to Google greedy arseholes. A typical response: you can never ever ever satisfy open source proponents... The stereotype that every open source user greedily wants more.
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Chrome is definitely a better experience than Safari, and not by a little bit. In many ways Safari is the worst browser out there right now. Most of its market share comes from the fact that Apple still forces Safari to be used on iOS no matter what browser you think you have installed. I think the DOJ should go after Apple harder on that than they are on Google, because nobody is forcing anyone to use Chrome the same way Apple is forcing their users to use Safari.
Desktop Safari’s ~15% market share, which exceeds Firefox’s ~7%, suggests otherwise. Mac users can freely switch and yet many don’t.
There are likely several reasons for this but I think the two biggest ones are its differences in philosophy: first, that browsers should be just one utility among many on a desktop OS and not try to set itself apart and second, to actively combat the internet’s hostilities on behalf of the user.
Chrome will never do either. It tries to be a distinct brand and platform instead of meshing with your desktop nicely and it’s not going to do anything that will negatively impact Google’s many ad businesses.
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I agree that the DOJ should enforce browser choice in iOS much like the EU has but in this scenario it feels besides the point. No matter how better or worse anyone might think Safari is it’s my right to choose which browser I access a site with, and I’d rather not be harassed to change.
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> still forces Safari to be used on iOS no matter what browser you think you have inst
What's the difference whether Chrome is using WebKit or Blink from the perspective of most users? How would they notice that and why would they care?
I find Safari to be a fantastic product overall both on desktop and mobile but I have stuck to Chrome to keep my options open in future in case I want to use non-Apple hardware
I think the real issue is Google is able to use Chrome to push web standards in any direction they want.
Isn’t Google refusing to make changes that boost online privacy because it’ll tank their ad revenue?
But I don't see how that equates to a monopoly. They certainly have the ability to direct their development of their product in the way that they want. Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.
If the edge browser was so much better and much better privacy wise or the kiwi browser or any of the others the internet can move fairly quickly from one choice to another when that choice is better. For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case. I'm also guessing that most other users also haven't found anything "better"
It’s horizontal tying.
If Chrome was not owned by an ad company, the owners of chrome would push for instead of against privacy protections (see: firefox, safari).
The browser monopoly, which Chrome sells at a loss, enables the ad company. This is the problem.
Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google. So anything against ads does not get upstreamed to Chromium.
Chrome also is a major browser vendor, whereas kiwibrowser and opera are not, which means the standards boards listen to them more. If those seats were not owned by an ad company, standards would likely be different.
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The monopoly the DoJ is trying to break up isn't Chrome, it's Search. From TFA:
> Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome — the most widely used browser worldwide — because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, said the people.
>Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.
With what funding? Chrome loses money. Edge loses money. Safari loses money. Firefox loses Google's money. Brave loses VC money.
Without some endless source of money, funding you for an ulterior motive, you can't compete with them. Which is why:
>For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case.
The anti-competitive practices ensure there can't be effective competition.
Monopolies aren't bad per se. Monopolies are bad because they allow you to abuse the market and consumers. If you can be similarly abusive without a full monopoly that's equally bad.
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> I don't see how that equates to a monopoly
The monopoly is in ads. Google uses its control of Chrome to act uncompetitively in advertising.
Isn't it even worse than that? Didn't they make changes via Manifest v3, which will not allow me to follow the FBI's advisory about using ad blockers, to make sure their ad revenue does not decline?
I do realize you can still use uBlock, but my understanding is that updates will be slow rolled, correct? Doesn't this open the window to malicious people to serve me mal-ads?
>I do realize you can still use uBlock
No, you can't. You can use "uBlock origin lite" which is the manifest v3 version that doesn't work correctly.
M3 seems to be failing, but I agree that it matters that the tried.
No. They're not doing those changes because regulators like the DOJ[0] threatened them with anti-trust action if they did. That's the same DOJ that's now asking for Chrome to be divested.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-doj-cookies-privac...
Uh. That was not my understanding of that situation.
Blocking third party cookies this way still leaves Google’s tools which people voluntarily install with access to data that now nobody else has access to.
Everyone else's ad revenue. The UK computing regulator is the main player here.
Quite the opposite, Google is the key sponsor of Privacy Sandbox: https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/
Working out why they're doing this is left as an exercise to the reader.
The whole reason for "privacy sandbox" is to still do user tracking, but do it in an anonymous way that they hope legislators won't go after. It's Google seeing the writing on the wall that legislation will soon ban third-party cookie tracking and fingerprinting and the like, so they need to be proactive and protect the ad tracking business.
A better name for it would have been something like "anonymous user tracking / data collection", but "privacy sandbox" is probably a good marketing term to fuzz what it's really doing. To a normal user it makes it sounds like Google is doing something good and protecting them, while it's really just "please opt in to our new more anonymized tracking technology while still allowing us to track you".
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The DOJ has renounced the consumer welfare standard [https://prospect.org/justice/2024-08-09-will-googles-monopol...].
>The DOJ has renounced the consumer welfare standard [https://prospect.org/justice/2024-08-09-will-googles-monopol...].
And, apparently, these guys[0] think that's a good thing.
[0] https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Publish_...
I genuinely have no idea what "missing features" or incompatibilities keep people on Chrome compared to the benefits of uBlock just plain working better on Firefox.
Bookmarks, passwords, payment information, recent tabs, extensions... all synced with your Google account in Chrome. Firefox can't sync to your Google account. All that information is synced across the entire Google account system, to your Android phone, other Chrome browser instances and so on. Yes I know you could export your data from Google and pull it into Firefox's sync system, but that's a hurdle.
Why would you want all this stuff synced? The only thing I want out of that is passwords, but 1Password works just fine for that. In fact, I don't trust a browser to store my passwords securely.
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It is a hurdle to switch, yes.
But everything you listed (apart from integrating with Google's servers) can be done with Firefox.
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This would be a relevant list, except no one I know who compulsively uses Chrome...uses any of that stuff at all.
Google Meet is particularly Firefox hostile with camera/audio support, but I'm not sure how common it actually is.
PWAs being entirely unsupported by Firefox for instance.
This is the last big thing keeping me on Vivaldi (based on chromium). I do use those, and would most likely fully switch to Firefox when implemented.
What things are only available as PWAs that are worth it? Like I know they exist, but I've never installed or used one.
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uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly fine for me on Chrome.
Maybe there's some 0.01% of ads that would get blocked in the Firefox version that aren't in Chrome. But I don't see any regular users switching because they're noticing ads not getting blocked now.
One difference between lite and the full version is CNAME cloaking protection. The enforcement of Manifest V3 in Chrome opens up a gap in the ecosystem where analytics and advertising providers will increasingly use CNAME cloaking, since it can't be blocked from the world's most popular browser. And this is the world in which using Firefox with its support for Manifest V2 suddenly becomes quite a bit more attractive.
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It works fine for now. As soon as Manifest V2 is officially gone you will certainly see an increase in ads. What ad company wouldn't take advantage of more limited ad blocking capabilities in the most popular web browser?
That's just Google boiling the frog slowly.
I use FF full-time but have to use Chromium for WebEx and Teams calls to avoid massive jank.
I bought Ozlo Sleep buds recently. Really cool hardware that does exactly what they say they do. However, the device I read with at night runs Android 11 which is too old for their app (requires Android 12). I can configure and update the sleep buds through a browser with WebUSB...but only with Chrome.
The only reason I keep a Chrome installation is for when I want seemless in-page translation. Firefox just added a version of this feature but, for some reason, didn't include the most important language for nerds: Japanese.
Firefox still lacks webgpu support.
> uBlock just plain working better on Firefox.
In what way does uBlock work better on Firefox? I don't see any ads in Chrome. Ad block is more important to me than any browse. I use Kiwi on Android instead of Chrome, and would switch immediately on desktop if I saw ads.
This wiki page on uBlock origin repository is a direct answer to your question.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
I disagree. We get things in Chrome that is not in the consumer's interest simply because Google wants to get more data from its users and display more ads.
If Chrome were to be separated from the Ad business, it would be beneficial for privacy.
> It must be asked are people gravitating toward Chrome because ....
It's because Chrome used to be shoved down everyone's throat up until few years ago. Once stable base of users was made (by force and deception) the market took momentum
Nah, it was faster, lighter and better.
I say this as someone who has been back on Firefox for years at this point.
> it was faster, lighter and better
And more stable
It also used to be distributed like an adware, bundled with along other softwares during installation.
I do think you're rewriting history a bit here. Of course a Google advertised to their product but people didn't move to Chrome simply because of the advertisements. Chrome took hold because literally every other choice sucked and sucked hard. When you only have sucky choices you have to deal with them and they made something massively better than anything else at the time. Companies with buckets of money like Microsoft didn't innovate in this space and even when they saw what Google was doing with Chrome their ability to compete with it was laughable. Even when they finally switch to their edge browser because the Internet explorer name was so tainted with bad experiences they still suck in this space. Even with Bing and the billions of dollars they can throw at it they still suck in this space.
I think it's a combination of both. There was absolutely a period where Chrome was faster, and Chrome still has a better security design. But Google also pushed Chrome incredibly hard, including bundling it with other software as a checked-by-default box, and used all the tactics to get it made the default browser and make it hard to switch, and advertised it on Google services for free, and made some features of Google products require it.
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It took hold because it was a part of almost every popular piece of software installer back in the day, and enabled by default