Welcome to Google’s nightmare: US reveals plan to destroy search monopoly
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This is not meant to solve problems caused by corporations - it is to enable more corporations to have access to your data and find new and innovative ways to monetize it. The court was never working for users. If you're saying "how come this isn't helping me?, I don't get it!", that's is because it is not supposed to help you. You are just the product.
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So tell me why the court didn't rule that Chrome must make advertising tracking an opt-in?
Ah yes, the users are the product here. You're blaming the users for not wanting to be someone elses product. Users don't have that right because there too stupid to realize how great it will be to have somecorp hungrier than Google innovate and make more money on their data than Google, while cutting back on security to keep profit high.
I guess I had better apologize because that sounds sarcastic, so I'm sorry. However, I fail to see in your argument how this will actually be better for the user when all probable consequences are considered.
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Yes - and all are going to be in trouble when Google is no longer allowed to bid for search.
Really/? Tell that to Firefox.
The goal appears to be to help Microsoft, if it isn't then the government's lawyers are incompetent, because that is all they will achieve.
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Hardly, this is just the DOJ finally enforcing rules that have been on the books for a while. Stopping Google from paying to be the default and give up it's dominate browser is far cry from the competition rules the EU has in place. Google did it to themselves by using it's position and money to ensure it stayed at the top aka illegally maintaining a monopoly.
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History: "Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door".
Now: "Build a better mouse trap and the DOJ will break down your door".
Now: "Build a better mouse trap and the DOJ will break down your door".
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This was the ninth and last paragraph of your comment;
"And here you are, being a pathetic little fanboy and worshipping Google because you hate "M$" or some shit. Stop trying to suck the dicks of the people who want you to be their literal slaves."
Listen to yourself.
"And here you are, being a pathetic little fanboy and worshipping Google because you hate "M$" or some shit. Stop trying to suck the dicks of the people who want you to be their literal slaves."
Listen to yourself.
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AKA "as long as the school district gets access to all the student data"
Gotta catch kids querying forbidden subjects - LGBTQ stuff, freedom of speech, laws etc etc. Anything that takes away adult control and stops them being bought up as proper little America First Youth Brigade members and properly reverencing the Dear Leader.
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Because It's the dominate web browser so there is considerable sway in how sites are developed, Chrome being the one they absolutely have to work on, and it can slurp a lot of data about users. Heck, Google has already broken ad blockers with manifest v3 no doubt to benefit their ad business.
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You're arguing a point I didn't make. If we had to list out all of the choices forced on us by corporations every day, are we really going to list the default search engine as one of the most abusive? Among all the deception, obfuscation, and leveraged exclusivity that makes up modern commerce? Hell, I wouldn't even say it's the most abusive thing Google does. Have you seen the play store?
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Google is an ad business. You break up the ad business, and you watch more closely the next time ad businesses start to reconsolidate. The browser is just window dressing. This is like making an oil company sell its gas stations.
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Well reported, but the situation is summed up by mentioning the criminal T**** (the loser) team stepping in. There are other ways said Donnie Corleone
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Splitting ads and search is important, but splitting Chrome as well. Chrome + Search is not a good monopoly and Chrome + Ads is a also not a good monopoly. Splitting all 3 is necessary.
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Google: "We don't like any solution that will actually fix the problem".
Whiny fucking babies.
Whiny fucking babies.
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uesc_marathon
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Everything you just said is a massive argument for getting Google out of that space and forcing them out.
The entire educational market should not be beholden to a single massive supercompany.
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Based on the current make up of SCOTUS (which is not going to improve under Trump) and the SCOTUS precedents for the last 30+ years, the chances are the DOJs case will die when it reaches SCOTUS.
But just in case miracles do happen, and billionaire donors do not influence SCOTUS judges, I do worry that the DOJ cure may be as bad as the disease they have identified.
Selling off Chrome and/or Android sounds great but I worry about the longer term implications. There are 2 sorts of company/investor who might buy Chrome or Android - those that are in it for the long term and therefore need the product to have long term profitability and those whose plan is to rip as much cash out of the product as possible over the short/medium term whilst doing little development so depreciating the usefulness of the product over the longer term.
Irrespective of the type of investor who buys Chrome or Android I foresee much more harvesting of personal data, and more ads per web page. I also foresee the probable death of Firefox, no one else will pay as much as google for the default search engine, and I would not be surprised to see Opera and Vivaldi going. We could quickly be left with Edge becoming a monopoly due to lack of alternatives outside of the Apple world - and MS does not have a great track record when it controls the browser space.
The mobile market might be a little better. If short term investors buy Android then we do at least have Samsung maybe also Amazon with the ability to develop its own fork of Android
But just in case miracles do happen, and billionaire donors do not influence SCOTUS judges, I do worry that the DOJ cure may be as bad as the disease they have identified.
Selling off Chrome and/or Android sounds great but I worry about the longer term implications. There are 2 sorts of company/investor who might buy Chrome or Android - those that are in it for the long term and therefore need the product to have long term profitability and those whose plan is to rip as much cash out of the product as possible over the short/medium term whilst doing little development so depreciating the usefulness of the product over the longer term.
Irrespective of the type of investor who buys Chrome or Android I foresee much more harvesting of personal data, and more ads per web page. I also foresee the probable death of Firefox, no one else will pay as much as google for the default search engine, and I would not be surprised to see Opera and Vivaldi going. We could quickly be left with Edge becoming a monopoly due to lack of alternatives outside of the Apple world - and MS does not have a great track record when it controls the browser space.
The mobile market might be a little better. If short term investors buy Android then we do at least have Samsung maybe also Amazon with the ability to develop its own fork of Android
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If I were to try and break up google I wouldn't focus on chrome. I would focus on separating out Android and then separating their ad divisions from their search division.
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so they don't have to worry about apple maybe coming up with something decent. it doesn't mean google search isn't the best. duckduckgo and bing are both shit compared to google. even with all the complaints about google search turning into shit.
if apple were to come up with their own search thing, they would still have used google search as default until they had their own thing working somewhere on par.
steam? or crucial's ssd interface thingy, etc
forcing google to keep funding some sort of chromium foundation but have no influence on its direction nor allow it to make their own version might not be a bad thing. but that's wholly different from selling chrome off to some other nefarious entity, be it ms / musk or oracle, etc
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I don't really see a true monopoly. The perceived monopoly comes from the lack of complete alternatives.
For schools ChromeOS really seems to be the only option. At one time Apple was the best option, but Apple bought that market.
For personal iOS or Android are really the only accessible options. Alphabet and Apple have both completed and locked their ecosystem.
The real issue is the ecosystem and Alphabet has theirs but so does Apple and Microsoft.
Apple is the only ecosystem that has it all. They would be considered a monopoly, but they are a full stack company. They will never license out their ecosystems because this would result in a Monopoly.
Alphabet and Microsoft are the closest, but Microsoft is lacking a Mobile OS. If they had a open-source mobile OS that would be a game changer.
Disclosure: I use Bing/Edge for everything. I still use Android ecosystem. Apple is not in my personal life.
For schools ChromeOS really seems to be the only option. At one time Apple was the best option, but Apple bought that market.
For personal iOS or Android are really the only accessible options. Alphabet and Apple have both completed and locked their ecosystem.
The real issue is the ecosystem and Alphabet has theirs but so does Apple and Microsoft.
Apple is the only ecosystem that has it all. They would be considered a monopoly, but they are a full stack company. They will never license out their ecosystems because this would result in a Monopoly.
Alphabet and Microsoft are the closest, but Microsoft is lacking a Mobile OS. If they had a open-source mobile OS that would be a game changer.
Disclosure: I use Bing/Edge for everything. I still use Android ecosystem. Apple is not in my personal life.
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Sure, but that’s orthogonal to the browser they use: if it’s their computer, they’re getting that data, but that doesn’t mean 183 data brokers should also be harvesting it.
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Microsoft would probably buy it. They've done good things with Edge. But given the direction Microsoft leadership has been pushing everything the last decade or so, I wouldn't want them owning it either.
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It's not a trope. It's a known phenomenon, and it's why defaults matter.
If being the default wasn't important, do you think Google would have paid $20 billion to Apple to be the default on iOS?
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Are you trying to tell me Google hasn't been stagnant? Name one big innovation that they themselves have come up with in the last 6 years.
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And you don't get that that's the very definition of anti-competitive behavior?
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There isn’t a ton of competition in the browser business (just a few well solidified companies)… but ton of potential in the search / ad space business. I’m actually surprised by this. I think they should have gone for the ad / search and not worry so much about decoupling a browser.
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Spinning off Chrome + ChromeOS + Google Docs together might actually be a viable standalone company, unlike Chrome alone. What do folks think? Any other divisions that could be thrown in to make it work?
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(bold italic text above is my addition)
Especially if your mouse trap already happens to control >75% of the market.
Fixed that for you.
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I'm gonna say it: this is the stupidest possible remedy from the DOJ.
I'm all for busting some trusts, but they picked the worst part to break off. Chrome can't survive on its own and who would buy it if it's basically established that it's illegal to monetize it in any way? Furthermore, if search default deals are illegal, then Firefox also dies because 80% of its revenue is from the Google deal. Lastly, even MS Edge is in hot water from this because it's basically Chromium with some MS sprinkles on top, and if there are no longer thousands of people working on improving Chromium at Google, then Microsoft is left in a bad spot.
The more reasonable approach would have been to break off Android (and maybe Pixel) and disallow search default deals. That leaves Firefox out in the cold, but it substantially weakens Google's grip over the search ecosystem.
I'm all for busting some trusts, but they picked the worst part to break off. Chrome can't survive on its own and who would buy it if it's basically established that it's illegal to monetize it in any way? Furthermore, if search default deals are illegal, then Firefox also dies because 80% of its revenue is from the Google deal. Lastly, even MS Edge is in hot water from this because it's basically Chromium with some MS sprinkles on top, and if there are no longer thousands of people working on improving Chromium at Google, then Microsoft is left in a bad spot.
The more reasonable approach would have been to break off Android (and maybe Pixel) and disallow search default deals. That leaves Firefox out in the cold, but it substantially weakens Google's grip over the search ecosystem.
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The Chromium bandwagon is a totally different issue. The reality is that it's really hard to build a decent browser engine, especially one that behaves roughly the same way to other browsers on the edge cases, and Google had already poured O($10B) (yes billion with a B) into making a good one that is open source.
Most web browsers using Chromium means we no longer have the issue of "Please ensure you're using Internet Explorer version 8-11 for this page, it won't work otherwise".
Using Chromium carries no obligation to use Google Search or anything Google really, just look at Brave, Arc, or MS Edge. All three use Chromium for their base.
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Firefox literally makes 80+% of its revenue on the search default deals with Google.
Opera and Vivaldi have been close to folding several times and have their own not great stuff going on (last I used them, they definitely had paid product placements in the browser). Brave and Arc are the only ones I know that are actually decent alternative stand-alone browsers, and it's not clear how they make money.
Lastly, none of these standalone browsers actually do the expensive part of browser development: the engine. All of them piggyback on Chromium. If they had to develop their own engine, they would need 10x the headcount, and they almost definitely would have folded by now.
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I simply don't see how any of this is going to help the consumer and that's who the FTC is supposed to be helping.
Is the theory that all of this is going to take a couple percent off the cost of Internet ads due to more competition and that minuscule reduction will result in lower consumer prices?
Is the theory that all of this is going to take a couple percent off the cost of Internet ads due to more competition and that minuscule reduction will result in lower consumer prices?
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I see a lot of people here...scared and absolutely Looney because they think going back to the old way is going to be so bad. You all except for the smart few are all addicted rats. Its gotten so bad YouTube let you pay for no ads and now there's ads. Something must be done about google. Just go own your own media libraries and touch grass please before you pro-anything google.
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To note, this was an early-comments reply to someone who apparently only wants to carry water for Alphabet/Google, so I was listing areas of leverage the megacorp had. To you, it may be a separate issue, but the concern remains that the browser rendering engine underpinning the expectations of the web is controlled by the search/ad giant in the room. Maybe you haven't been looking, but "it just works" implies Chromium and nothing else. Safari and Firefox are being edged out (pun, hah >.>) because supporting The One Renderer is easier.
Things like the other mentions of Manifest V3 rollout are how Google is leveraging, in a monopolist fashion, its power over the web market. You can no longer win against the shifting sands of ad display/rendering/loading algorithms by the business decision of the dominant ad marketer (a position they have demonstrably abused). Their choices lever on the rest of the internet being developed. Video streaming? YouTube gets the back-stage pass on how to optimize formats and render content. Microsoft: will mostly just live with what happens in upstream because they don't have the browser leverage; it's Google that does. Everyone else? They're even more stuck with upstream's decisions as they try to keep their differentiating position.
For now, it looks like core-Chromium browsers will be fine with uBlock Origin, but I don't know how deep the extension management hooks lie from Chrome back to Chromium. For anyone who knows, will the Mainifest ever have a tie to rendering? Can the bug-for-bug tracking result in Microsoft, Opera, et al. getting sucked into limiting extensions?
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Safari and Firefox both have their own engines that actually work almost perfectly. The nice thing about Chromium is that it is actually generally standards compliant (yes I know it's partially that way because "The Chrome Way" becomes the standard), but even in the early days they took a very rigorous approach to actually following the spec where possible and limiting "off label" weirdness. Internet Explorer was a much much crueler mistress, it did all sorts of relatively unpredictable shit even for fairly simple asks.
That's why Safari, Firefox, and Chrome are all much more interoperable than IE ever was, they all take the standards fairly seriously (and Chrome and Safari have some shared lineage too), unlike IE back in the day that just kinda did it's own thing and said "deal with it" even if that thing was excessively stupid.
Re Manifest V3, it really doesn't matter to other Chromium browsers AFAIK. Other Chromium browsers have various spins on the extension system anyway, and the fundamentals of how an extension interacts with a page can't really change all that much while keeping "lawful good" extensions functional.
I also dispute the premise that ad blockers are a 100% necessary thing to have, ads are what pays the bills of almost every website on the Internet, and having an ad blocker a) prevents good actors from getting paid and b) prevents market selection between "tasteful" advertising and "trash" advertising. If you can't see all the terrible banner ads on idk, PCMag, then how will you know to go there less to encourage them to tone back their ads?
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