Note: Original report by Bloomberg, article by Reuters proxied by Neuters to bypass paywall.
They can just wait it out until it becomes the corpo-friendly Dept. of Injustice on Jan. 20th.
Better hurry, Trump’s rubber stamp DOJ will kill this faster than a cop encountering a dog.
For the right price.
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.
Why force one company to sell off their browser? Shouldn’t MS have to sell Edge and Apple sell Safari?
Microsoft having IE/Edge as the default browser has already cost them in the past. I don’t think Apple faced anything with Safari.
The problem today with chrome is how prevalent it is and how that influences the main product of the internet (advertising), which happens to be Google’s mais product too. Apple can at least make the argument that they make their money with the hardware, not the browser.
Either way, I think all OS should at least give you a list of browsers on first use to choose from.
Right, I remember the MS/IE issue in the past. I never understood why Apple wasn’t held to the same scrutiny. They don’t have the corporate hold like Windows does, so maybe that was why.
So if Google has to sell off Chrome, what happens to Chromebooks? It runs on ChromeOS with Chrome being the main interface. Could Google not spin off Chrome as another company?
apple has, on mobile.
Either way, I think all OS should at least give you a list of browsers on first use to choose from.
I like this idea if only because it means I don’t have the default web browser hanging around only ever having been used to download another web browser.
Rad. Do Microsoft next.
Again! Again!
Sell off? So who will buy
The Onion
Microsoft
doubtful. they replaced trident (in house engine) with chromium for edge because of the cost of maintenance.
they wouldn’t need edge anymore if they bought Chrome. The decades long struggle to make people use a Microsoft web browser would be over
Stock didn’t drop
HA!
What a joke.
Yes, regulate the web browsers where you can just download librewolf or brave, but don’t do anything about the criminal ISPs and wireless network service providers.
I heard the same for Android and I was pretty supportive of the sentiment until I listened to the Android Faithful podcast episode discussing it…
If Google doesn’t develop Android, nobody will. Whoever buys Android, we don’t know if they will maintain the AOSP. Android has been an equal parts rollercoaster of good and bad ideas thanks to Google, but it has had someone do that…
Maybe LineageOS could take over, but that’s just insane wishful thinking.
Nokia, Siemens, Oracle, Linux Foundation, Tesla, IBM, OpenAI…there a hundreds of companies wealthy enough in that space that would not pose a consumer protection issue.
Fair point. I don’t think I thought of this lol.
They are going to ask a judge like they have no fucking balls.
[Google controls how people view the internet]
This doesn’t quite make sense. How does Chrome “control how people view the internet”? Isn’t html/css the main thing that controls how people view the internet?
[ and what ads they see in part through its Chrome browser, which typically uses Google search,]
But it is trivial to change your default search agent right?
Is this move something we should view as a good thing, and if so, then why?
Essentially, everything is Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
Brave, Edge etc are chrome.
Most people are using chrome.
Google controlling chrome controls what the vast majority of people use to see the internet, and then they change chrome to make it harder for you to block ads that they want to show.
There’s no reason for chrome to break ad blockers unless it’s owned by an ad company.
Edit: Google done some other shady things by owning it in the past as well.
Steam, Spotify, Discord. Whoops, all Chromium.
Chrome has a massive market share and Google abuses that market share by breaking web standards, and pushing people towards Chrome because “the competition doesn’t work”.
They act in bad faith and abuse their position to more deeply entrench their position in anticompetitive monopolistic ways.
That’s the Crux of it.
Google abuses that market share by breaking web standards,
Has this actually happened? Are there examples?
This is probably the real reason corporate America had no interest in endorsing Harris.
