> A major antitrust report that the House Judiciary Committee released this week found that Chrome’s market share allows Google to “effectively set standards for the industry,” an issue of particular relevance as Chrome phases out cookies.<p>HN is full of creative thinkers. Someone should figure a way to get gorhill before the committee so he can explain what ublock origin does and how Google has been trying to destroy it in the name of "efficiency."<p>I'm not sure exactly how to frame blocking all the goddamned ads in a conversation about Google monopolizing all the goddamned ads. But senators and their staffers should know about blockers and be using one on all their machines.
Antitrust oversight of Google, similiar to what was done to Microsoft in the 2000s, will do more than spinning off any properties from Google.<p>Google is able to invest in and made Chrome popular using cash from their advertising business, and Chrome's popularity allows Google to shape the web environment for their advertising business. If Google were to lose Google Chrome, there is nothing that would prevent them from directly or indirectly evolving Chromium. If Google is prevented from making a browser, then they could even move the focus of computing away from the web browser with power from their search business.<p>Therefore, antitrust oversight is required to curb the types of behavior that lead to the antitrust situation in the first place.
Isn't there also a big conflict of interest between Google "the search engine of the world and indexer of all information" and Google "seller of ads"?<p>When I search for something, some stuff comes in front of other stuff, and sometimes that stuff isn't the best result because of a monetary incentive. If you criticize that, you're given myriad reasons why. All I know is, it's easier to find information on Reddit sometimes than Google, to the point where I add "reddit" to the search keywords, even though I barely use Reddit as a commenter or follower of subs.<p>And <i>everyone</i> hates the SEO junk that now dominates the first few pages. It's an ugly thing and not in the service of people.<p>Here's an idea. Separate Google seller of ads and room in the search results, from Google the "Wikipedia-like" provider of information for humanity.
Chrome as a separate entity would have a very interesting relationship with google. On one hand, Google would be willing to pay a large amount to Chrome to be the default search engine provider, much more than it currently spends on running the Chrome org. Especially since other search providers like Bing would be bidding for the same spot.<p>On the other hand, Chrome is nothing without promotion on google properties and being installed by default on Android. Chrome would need to pay Google an extraordinary amount to continue to be the default browser on Android. Maybe even the same amount as what Google would pay Chrome to be the default search engine provider.<p>Any agreement between Google and Chrome needs to account for both transactions - default search engine <i>and</i> default on Android.<p>The alternative is that regulators force Chrome to become a separate entity and also force Google to keep Chrome as the default for some period of years, although I don’t know if it’s possible for them to compel such an arrangement. If it isn’t, Google could simply release a new browser based on Chromium, just like Microsoft did and make that the new default on Android.<p>Even if regulators force Android to become separate from Google in addition to Chrome, it still doesn’t work. Now Android has all the negotiating power. It can create its own browser based on Chromium and charge Google an exorbitant fee for being the default search engine.<p>It’s frustrating when you hear people selling “just break them up” as a panacea without taking into account what would happen afterwards.
How would an argument against Chrome this even hold up? Google has decoupled the technology from the distribution. The chromium browser is open source, any body can build on it and many companies have. The platform where chrome is pre-installed doesn't prevent the use of other browsers and underlying technologies unlike Apple. How does consumer preference make one a monopoly when moving away from chrome is not difficult at all as you have no lock-ins
Watching Google ram through whatever specifications they want unimpeded is pretty unnerving. Brave Browser is disabling QUIC because they suspect Google is tracking users at the protocol level. Facebook/Google are also throwing tremendous weight behind ipv6, which allows for casual tracking of individual devices behind firewalls.<p>EDIT: see comment below about QUIC. tl;dr my info was out if date
It’s not clear if chrome is really the heart of Google’s monopoly power, if it is a monopoly. It seems to me like the combination of being the ad network and the (non ad) content distribution & discovery network is the real issue. If I had to pick a thing to make Google give up, it would probably be YouTube and not Chrome.
I feel like it might be too late to untangle the mess the web has become without strong market regulation. With Google pushing for QUIC, DoH, ever-increasing scope of browsers and JavaScript, CSS insanity, etc. The time where US antitrust instruments could've been effective might have passed over ten years ago when Google bought DoubleClick and YouTube, and Facebook bought WhatsApp, etc. Today, it seems only a regulated market covering hosting, DNS, mail based on standardized services, without "free" vertical add-ons (privacy-invasion-as-business-model) with mandatory transferability to another provider in a DNS-like model could work. And it would help if gov, for once, fund web standards rather than relying on private parties with W3C-like funding models since, clearly, the domain of creating standards for browsers has been taken over by Google as well in the absence of any other funding. If then, over a period of several years, we could rollback most of the abominations on the web since 2010, and force a choice of browsers on desktop and mobile, and a number of telcos competing for web and mail spaces, plus ad providers, we might be going somewhere. Ain't going to happen, though.
Google is hindering innovation around Chromium by refusing to merge upstream patches that may threaten their business interests, such as support for browser extensions on Android [1].<p>The same way no single megacorp can shape the Linux kernel according to their business interests, and to the detriment of competitors, it would be important to free the open source Chromium browser from Google's exclusive grip.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/4493#issuecomment-705683827" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/4493#issuecomm...</a>
To be honest, I think this country could use antitrust breakup for probably every tech giant (in addition to other industries altogether like telecom!)<p>I think both shareholders and the economy would benefit in the end; these breakups would make explicit the implicit relationship between these multibillion dollar business functions and, in the process, incite a profit motive that would invite competition to make the ecosystem healthier.<p>For example:<p>Google could be split roughly into ads, search, browser, youtube, mobile, and nest/devices. When the relationship of each of these divisions is made external (ads pay search, search pays browser to be the default, browser pays mobile to be the default, etc) then we we can now have healthy competition, like bing bidding to become chrome's default search or facebook ads bidding to serve google search ads.<p>I haven't thought it out as much but I'm certain society could benefit from breaking out a few major business functions of amazon, of apple, of microsoft, of facebook, and so on.<p>In fact, if we were a really forward thinking society we could write a law rather than rely on antitrust action to restrict tech companies operating in the US from combining too many business functions - did it ever make sense to allow content discovery platforms to <i>also</i> be ad distribution platforms? Perhaps we should categorically disallow that.<p>Of course, I'm sure the free market minded of you will immediately point out - why do we want government dictating what private companies can and can't do? I sympathize with this sentiment, but ultimately the point of democracy is that the democratically elected government can make fair rules with the goal of promoting a better society.<p>If we can make a better society by separating content distribution from content monetization, I don't see why we shouldn't. If we can make a better society by separating marketplaces from their participants (e.g. amazon & AmazonBasics) then I don't see why we shouldn't.
OK, but who would buy it? Does Chrome make money directly? It does indirectly for Google probably, but what would do anybody else?<p>It could be good, if the buyer started charging for it. Very few people would use it and it would give a chance to Chromium-based browsers... or Firefox, or maybe not.
I think it is essential that Google undergoes a transformation process through an anti trust case.<p>Chrome is the 100% least important problem.<p>Since every other browser now is based the same foundation,
it is trivial for Google to point out that there are many alternative browsers.<p>Breaking up search, ads, and other integrated pats of Google should be the highest priority.
This might be one of the easier tech breakups. Chromium is already open-source and buildable without Google infra, so doing the same for the close source code should be a lot easier than migrating a service outside of Google infra. Firefox has shown there's a viable business model. The relationship with Android and Chromebook would be weird, but it might just look like a licensing deal. There's also precedent in antitrust history. The main thing I'd look at in Chrome is how much Google's used it to give itself an unfair advantage. I'd say "some;" the aggressive sign-in, default search provider, oversized influence in the development if HTTP, CSS, and JS. I'd put the synergies somewhere between Amazon/Whole Foods and Google/Doubleclick.<p>About the "precedent" point: I wonder if the MS antitrust case slowed down the development of the web. The dot com crash and people still being on dialup didn't help, but the web wasn't really a usable platform until 2004, and even then, it became a lot less interesting when smartphones took over.
How do you breakup a private company developing an OSS software? The best I can think of is break up the trademark such as Chrome or Chromebook and some few proprietary parts of Chrome. Chromium, the OSS part of the browser is available as OSS and Google can start developing even after the breakup. Or US government force private company to not to develop a certain software like a web browser?
It's a logical place to start given the X-Client-Data backdoor to DoubleClick and Google properties, which is fundamentally anti-competitive in the ad space by giving DoubleClick access to data that other ad networks are unable to obtain and making it literally impossible for Chrome users to opt out of (and not disclosing the DoubleClick relationship).<p>Then there's the constant stream of new web APIs which are used almost exclusively for tracking purposes by ad networks including Google properties. For an example of that, look at the AudioContext APIs which leak audio latency information (regularly used to fingerprint users) and are available to websites with no opt-in, no notice and are accessible even if you never use audio on the page. Practically all of the modern web APIs spearheaded by Chrome offer yet another tracking data-point that is abused primarily by ad networks including their own.
This government obsession with Google reeks of partisanship. Perhaps because in one of those leaked internal meetings Sergey Brin said he was offended by Trump's victory.<p>I don't mind progressive regulations to increase competition but is the government also putting the same effort in investigating other tech., media, telecom, energy companies ?
Here's the thing... anti-trust breakups are a hack to work around one core problem - taxation.<p>The reason corporations like FANG metastasize and become uncontrollable is that they have unfair competitive advantages that can be neutralized by proper taxation.<p>For example, why can Amazon ask cities to slash their taxes if they move their HQs there?<p>What are they going to do otherwise? Not have office?<p>Why doesn't my small ISV get the same tax advantages?<p>Corporations like Amazon effectively don't pay taxes and YOU'RE subsidizing them. We should be outraged.<p>Instead. Just change the law. Make it retroactive (ex post factor legislation only applies to criminal law) and demand that these companies immediately bring in their money into the US and pay taxes.<p>Everything else is just a hack.
How would that even work? Chrome doesn't make money on its own. It exists primarily as strategic endeavor intended to give Google some level of direct influence over the platform that the vast majority of its business runs on (the web). Without Google, how would Chrome survive?
I would love to see a Publicly Funded Browser - i.e., like PBS, or, NPR, but, a browser.<p>To be one option among others.<p>Ideally open sources as well : ) : )
Google has systematically leveraged its monopolies in search, online video, online email, its very high market presence in online documents to promote chrome to all users of all other browsers.<p>It has if the myriad popovers, interstitial, etc didn’t already harm the user experience of those browsers it has long been suggested (though I don’t know about proven) that their changes deliberately harm other browsers.<p>Then you have their unending attempts to add privacy invasive web features that aid their ad businesses (hey, one monopoly helping another, what fun!), and have minimal real value.