Hell yes. Next YouTube!
Somehow, Apple / Microsoft / Amazon / … skate by without getting the same beat-down.
Do anticompetitive things, win anticompetitive prizes.
Besides, plenty of governments had similar hard-ons against MS & IE in the early 2000s, people just have very short memories in the digital age.
> Apple / Microsoft / Amazon / … skate by without getting the same beat-down.
Their time will come. Defending something bad by pointing at others and saying they are also doing it is typically low-effort reactionism.
In any case, this is more whataboutism than anything. The fact that you perceive others as not being targeted doesn't mean that nothing should be done about Google's monopoly on Search.
Hopefully through that Google will end up with less influence to force anti-consumer decisions, like the recent adblock downgrades, on Chrome.
Fair enough, right? Of course all this is assuming decent oversight by DOJ, not allowing the sale to someone with monopolistic incentives of their own, e.g. Microsoft.
It’s like raising an exceptional child who is a criminal and having people come out of the woodwork saying “he was so good, he didn’t do anything wrong”
Many Apple products only connect with other Apple products. Microsoft keeps poking/pushing to use Edge on Microsoft. Brave browser did eat into share and made a mark.
What is stopping from other kids in the field (FF, Edge, Opera etc) to be better, beat Chrome and also blocks ads?
I know there are other arguments against Manifest v2, but they seem like parallel construction to justify the “real” reason.
The best argument I could make is that owning chrome allows you to see the searches people make on Google in the address bar (and if you were unscrupulous, on Google's Search page as well)? Maybe that's strong enough?
I'm genuinely concerned as a lover of the web that this will slow the innovation we've seen in the space to a crawl. The web has grown so much since the bad old days in no small part due to Chrome. I wonder if Google's vested interest in growing the web (since as when the web grows, so does search and ads usage) would result in them investing in Firefox instead, but I strongly doubt it (at least, not to the same level).
This is outrageous from the DOJ, hopefully Google can appeal. Given how the Google ecosystem works together, I don't see how this doesn't hurt consumers in the end.
It's a huge blow to open source in practice. It means the government doesn't accept the business strategy of making excellent open source software as a complement to main business aims.
Its a silly notion, but I'm just thinking out loud.
> While the government isn’t going as far as to demand Google spin out its Android business, it’s leaving the option open.
None of these options seem likely to create anything better than what we have now.
On the upshot, Firefox is going to see a resurgence. Hey, maybe Mozilla buys it?
If this happens, Mozilla is going to be fighting for survival, it’s not going to be in a position to make acquisitions.
