Comment by pbmonster
6 days ago
> Could Chromium be made close source?
Sure, it's BSD licensed, all future development could be done closed-source. Note that the name "Chromium" would need to stay with the open source side of the project, so it would be more like a closed fork than a re-licencing.
99% sure you could just keep using the name "Chrome", though, and stop releasing code into chromium instead.
So all companies can, right now, make a private fork and start selling it. There's no reason to pay for that right, everyone already has that right.
(I'm, of course, speaking in the context of xp84's suggestion that the browser should cost money. It's a fine idea, but I don't see how it applies here.)
You're essentially paying for control over the currently dominant web browser. You're paying for the existing Chrome installation base and to skip an absolute hell of a hiring process. Because forking Chromium and continuing development on your own needs over 100 of extremely narrowly specialized experts.
If you want your project to remain the currently dominant web browser, you better keep developing APIs people love, you better keep doing it faster than your competition can keep up with implementing them, and you better keep dominating the web standards committees.
Doing this from a position of a Chromium fork is orders of magnitude more difficult than just buying Chrome (and then keeping up pumping money into it at the rate Google has been doing).
> If you want your project to remain the currently dominant web browser, you better keep developing APIs people love, you better keep doing it faster than your competition can keep up with implementing them, and you better keep dominating the web standards committees.
Hey look, an incidental collision with my point!
I'd argue that Google specifically doesn't have nearly the obligation to keep doing these things as long as they are the ones who own Chrome, due to how many other things they can do to put their finger on the scales.
For instance, they could do things like:
- Show overwhelming amounts of ads in everyone's Gmail and say "Switch to Chrome for an ad-light experience."
- Or limit YouTube to 360p in non-Chrome browsers.
- Or only show the sponsored Google Search results (no organic) to non-Chrome browsers (let's be honest though, most non-nerds never click non-sponsored results anyway, and could scarcely find them even in the current Search UI).
- Or limit any new features on Google Workspace to Chrome browsers.
Google can maintain the Chrome near-monopoly using leverage from their other monopolies and near-monopolies. And they can use the Chrome near-monopoly to preserve and expand their marketshare of those other products. A very neat virtuous cycle (for Google). I don't think it promotes the health of free markets or consumer choice.