I'm curious though, if Google can no longer pay browsers for search engine traffic what is the business model that will sustain development and advancement in the space?
How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development?
What happens to all the applications that rely on Chrome extensions?
As much as I dislike Google behavior, I don't see this as being a good thing.
Google uses a complex anonymization/privacy framework to collect some aggregate signals from website visits, but they don't use it directly.
Regulators don't understand this, and technologists who do tend to distrust Google anyway and think they might secretly be using it.
There are all sort so other sketchy things, like what Edge does injecting itself into websites so Microsoft collects affiliate revenue.
There are countries where this wouldn't be allowed, but Google is largely self regulating in its biggest market.
All this would lose Chrome some market share but they are starting from a very dominant position, and for the general public it wouldnt be a big deal - people are already convinced that iOS and android devices are listening to them at all times for ad targeting!
Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-Chromium) based browsers?
As much as I loved Chrome when it first came out, I’ve also been well aware that Google’s backing of Chrome (and Chromium) has given it undue advantages in the browser market by effectively making everyone else compete with a loss leader. If Chrome itself cannot sustain its pace of development or even stay alive without the unlimited funding by Google, then I think that is a good thing and proof that it acting as a monopoly. Forcing Chrome to balance product velocity with revenue constraints evens the field amongst all browsers.
(edit: If Google killing competition by injecting unlimited funding into a project without needing to make a profit sounds familiar, it’s because they’ve done this for a long time. The often cited example being Google Reader.)
What would this business model be like, if, say, Google Chrome is eliminated?
As a reference, in China, very few people use Chrome because Google services are blocked. There are tons of third-party or vendor preinstalled browsers that bundles with bloatwares, put ads/clickbaits on every new tab, and spy on users. I'm pretty sure they are more sustainable than Firefox, former Opera, etc. But that's certainly a privacy dystopia :)
what you say is nice in theory but you already have the Microsoft backed Edge and Apple backed Safari that are not hamppered by the "need to find a support model" and "not be a loss leader"
And I am not looking forward again to a world where Microsoft disctates web development because for all privacy problems peaople have or think to have with Google, Microsoft ha proven that does way worse and doesn't even care for the image.
All in All Chrome being a loss leader backed by Google has been a good thing for all involved. Developers, Users and 3-rd parties. without it you woudn't have all those 3rd party chrome based browsers.
So what will sustain the development of browsers like Chrome or Firefox? Well that's the big question... Maybe they will downsize and become a non-profit similar to the Linux Foundation, and receive funding similar to how they do? I can see this have the affect of greatly slowing down the development of various web standards, but would that be such a bad thing?
- A pure focus on web browser monetization could lead to some interesting enterprise options. Presumably there'll be a lot of attempts to leverage Chromium, and an aggressive fork at some point.
- As AI proliferates, can they pull additional revenue by getting revshare from subscription AI products, alongside SEM? Or even revshare on the SEM clicks themselves?
This could also change the calculus for Apple building a search engine. If they could get an independent Chrome to sign on, with some data sharing provisions to help with development, they'd have a huge leg-up.
Alternatively, maybe they try to create a fusion of search results and AI from a variety of providers, so they can monetize SERPs themselves.
My question would be whether they could get back to aggressive product execution, given the size of the codebase. Acquiring the Browser Company would make a lot of sense.
Chrome's non-iOS market share is probably larger than Safari's market share, so any monopoly considerations about Safari apply equally to Chrome.
- A pure focus on web browser monetization could lead to some interesting enterprise options. Presumably there'll be a lot of attempts to leverage Chromium, and an aggressive fork at some point.
- As AI proliferates, can they pull additional revenue by getting revshare from subscription AI products, alongside SEM? Or even revshare?
This could also change the calculus for Apple building a search engine. If they could get an independent Chrome to sign on, with some data sharing provisions to help with development, they'd have a huge leg-up.
Alternatively, maybe they try to create a fusion of search results and AI from a variety of providers, so they can monetize SERPs themselves.
My question would be whether they could get back to aggressive product execution, given the size of the codebase. Acq
Actually, this is hardly healthy. Firefox feel this single source of can be deprived anytime that they tried many other alternative -- like VPN, partnership with pockets, some sponsor ad on tab selection, and even selling some data
Other browsers go even further..
I'm thinking 500M/year is enough to pay for a lot more developers than they currently have. Even half that should be enough to do more than they are. Where is all this money going?
whether that's directly as paid software, or indirectly as part of purchasing a device that has the software installed on it.
Also we already have browsers pre-installed. Safari and IE(or what ever it's called these days)
There's no call to advance these though. Chrome has profiles. That alone makes it a winner for my use case.
Separate Search + Google Ads platform as company A, Android + Chrome + Gmail as company B.
It will choke the user-data flow that Google Ads platform is feeding on. This opens doors to new competing search engines!
Android + Chrome + Gmail needs to be bundled with hardware purchases, licensed by HW vendors. Like Apple does with Safari + iCloud. This will create incentive to make them actually privacy focused, and could be its selling point.
Does Google have undue influence now? Sure. But I’m not so sanguine about the alternatives either.
You're literally pointing out the unfair advantage. The better question is how can all of the competitors manage? The answer is they can't very well because of the unfair advantage which Chrome has. If Chrome was split from Google (and Edge from Microsoft) browsers would be on a more equal playing field.
Imagine buying a browser
So, like, let's pick a set of criteria where web standards are considered complete, and move towards that. And when we do reach it, just stop.
They also already charge to be an extension developer and could easily charge much more.
If you want to switch your search engine for Safari on iOS, you open Settings, tap Safari, tap Search Engine, and tap your preferred search engine. Not many users do this, and the conclusion is that the default has an unfair advantage.
If you want to make Chrome your desktop browser, you open the default browser, search for Chrome, click the correct result, download the installer, run the installer, open Chrome, and set it as the default browser. So many users do this that people conclude Chrome has an unfair advantage.
Chrome is the only browser with a business model that makes sense to do this. Microsoft just doesn't make enough money from Bing/Edge to pay PC makers to leave Edge as the default. Firefox makes no money at all, and makes 95% of its revenue from Google's payments to be the default search engine. Safari isn't even available on Windows, and even then, 99% of Safari's revenue is from Google.
(Safari was available on Windows from 2007-2012, but it never captured much market share, because Apple was never willing to pay PC makers to make Safari the default.)
Here's StatCounter's estimates of desktop browser market share. The overwhelming majority of users are using their computer's default browser.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
Chrome: 65.55%
Edge: 13.9%
Safari: 8.69%
Firefox: 6.36%
Opera: 2.9%
The only viable business model for a web browser, the one that literally all major browsers use, is to accept money from a search engine (Google, specifically) to be make them the default. Even Kagi makes its own Orion web browser, for exactly this reason.
How could Chrome make its owner any money at all if Chrome couldn't accept money from Google to be the default search engine? How could Chrome possibly do what Firefox and Safari can't?
The problem is that Google owns both sides of the internet - the browser on your computer and the search engine to find everything.
As a result, they control your perception of the internet.
If a site doesn’t work, you as the user thinks the site doesn’t work. You don’t think oh, my browser is broken. Also, if you don’t find a site on Google the. To you, it doesn’t exist.
As a result, you have to bend your website to satisfy both Google search and Google chrome.
That’s why this is an issue. Because of those two things, Google effectively controls the internet, and you as a user or you as a website owner have essentially zero recourse when Google does something that harms you.
There’s also a clear conflict of interest having the advertising company own the user-agent.
I can set Kagi as the default search engine on iOS?
Because last I checked, Apple hardcoded their list of options.
As far as I know Chrome is the only thing that has been advertised on Googles famously clean "front page" before making a search.
That tells me something about how important it has been for them to push it.
There's also the way they've used deceptive ads ("download a better browser") to me and many other Firefox users over the years. (No, a browser that leaks my browsing habits to the worlds biggest advertising company while not supporting vertical tabs a decade after it entered the market certainly isn't best for me.)
https://open.substack.com/pub/bitecode/p/web-browsers-and-ou...
Nobody can get it except chrome.
Look at what Google does with Chrome and how it harms the internet, they literally just disabled an ad blocker and then offered a new tier of ad free Youtube for $8 a month.
Then think about the power it gives them for tracking, remember they tried to replace tracking cookies with their own standard?
I worry as part of Google, chrome is just an open source project with profit as a secondary motive, while as it’s own company they’ll probably try to make it more profitable and it’ll become worse and closed down.
As long as you don’t want a search engine that is not on the Apple’s authored list.
It's a massive cognitive dissonance that you're right -- it makes absolutely no sense. A lot of people just want to argue that Google is bad/too big/anticompetitive, and will use whatever argument is easiest to do so, even if they flat-out contradict each other.
The actual reality is that most people do change defaults quite easily when they perceive a benefit, so it's incredibly difficult to make the argument that defaults are anticompetitive. Chrome proves this. At the same time, some people aren't aware and will stick to a default, and the search market is so big that it's still worth $$$ for Google to pay Apple for the search default. The search deal proves this. On these points, there's zero anticompetitive behavior.
But if there's an anticompetitive angle regarding search, it's that in effect, Google is essentially paying Apple not to develop its own search engine. But that's basically an impossible legal argument to make. Nobody can force Apple to compete in search, and if it doesn't want to and would prefer to take Google's money, that's its free choice.
Most of that advantage comes from an unfair practice, of Google making consumers think that their choice of browser was in someway inferior (which could be true) and thus they should prefer Chrome (which is not true). If Chrome won market dominance using this method, then it becomes an unfair practice. Same thing with Microsoft Edge, Apple's App Store, etc. You can't use your market power in one market to influence another.
Because Chrome is the default on android phones and the easiest way to sync saved passwords between your android and your desktop/laptop is to use chrome in both places
Chrome having such a huge market share on mobile does add pressure for users to adopt it on Desktops and Laptops too
RIP Firefox?
Welp. They had a chance to be default alive and they fucked it by trying to spend the money on new initiatives instead of just spending the interest payments from an endowment.
They have been saving up a bit last year if you see the financial reports their reserves are just above $1B now and there are others who paid in the past (like Yahoo did till 2017) who will pay Firefox a decent amount if not like Google does .
My guess it is likely be Bing or probably a new generation AI company like OpenAI who will replace Google and perhaps even pay similar or close to what Google pays. The traffic is worth a lot. Bing attested to click flow as the reason they cannot make a better product in their testimony in this trial.
Also Google will either be allowed to continue the contract till its current end (I believe 1-2 more years ) or will pay fully and release Mozilla from their obligations (Mozilla is not party to the case so early termination without compensation would be penalty on them for no reason ).
Mozilla will need to make some significant cuts and layoffs no doubt will be hard on the team, but the product will survive.
I suspect chrome will get far less consumer friendly than chrome currently is if it is sold.
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...
I don't love the CEO bonuses, but they are objectively less than half a percent of Mozilla's budget. Google search on the other hand is 85% of their revenue.
If the concern is that people will start using Baidu search, then the solution should be to ban Baidu search. It shouldn't be to let some monopolies run rampant with the hopes that other countries will never be able to compete, while forgetting that free market economy is what made America
For the average American, both the efficient parts of monopolies (reduced redundancy which means fewer well-paying jobs) as well as the inefficient parts (reduced competition, higher prices, reduced standards of living) are net negatives. The political influence inherent to monopolies are also a negative effect on democracy, whereas foreign monopolies tend to have a harder time maintaining political influence.
Big companies tend to calcify. We can see that in FAMANG's products. Big companies can also remove any direct competition in multiple ways that smaller companies can't:
1. Bankrupt them through frivolous litigation.
2. Buy them.
3. Lower their prices so new competitors who don't have economies of scale can't be price competitive.
4. Propose legislative regulation that they can afford but smaller competitors can't.
5. Pay for negative news articles to be written against their competition (FUD).
6. Poach their talent.
But doesn't that make room for someone else to come in and be abusive? Yes and we have the tools to prevent that, if necessary.
Google could divest the Chrome product and keep contributing to Chromium, but the value proposition is really unclear when that OSS investment doesn’t buy you billions of dollars of browser lock-in value.
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-annou...
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/supporters-of-chromium-based...
It doesn't sound like this would solve the issue..
Those teams can keep working on Chrome, they'll just have to fall under some new kind of separate Chrome Inc. structure instead of under Google Inc., and Google will have to sell most of its shares of Chrome Inc. to third parties.
Splitting off Chrome really isn't the problem. Making the new Chrome Inc. profitable without accepting bribes from big tech, on the other hand...
What exactly are "best qualifications?" More simply are you assuming that myself and Google share a definition of "best qualified?" I genuinely don't believe that we do.
> And then who would replace them?
People working for a different company. Is your case that without Google no one would make web browsers?
“When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.”
The problem isn't within Google. They aren't doing anything substantial to lock users into Chrome. The problem is unforced errors on the part of both Apple and Mozilla creating awful web browsers that aren't worth using.
I feel this is meant to trigger people into reacting and causing a flame war.
Google has been making its own web properties work well on Google Chrome while making them perform poorer or make them break on other browsers. Google Chrome optimizes for Google, not the web, and certainly not “the open web”.
[0]: https://xcancel.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018
[1]: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...
Many new versions and updates of FF that I've tried have claimed to be much smoother and more efficient, only for the exact same shit to start happening across the years and multiple laptops used.
This feels like quite an exaggeration. I’ve used Chromium-derived browsers only sparingly in the past decade, with Safari and Firefox instead getting the bulk of my usage depending on the platform.
Generally if something doesn’t work under those browsers, the top two causes are unnecessary user agent sniffing with the site working fine once I pretend to be Chrome or the dev simply not testing against anything but Chrome. It’s been vanishingly rare that the browsers themselves were the cause of an issue.
Feels like Apple doesn't really care about it
What's disappointing to Google is that all of their kowtowing to the Biden administration's "content shaping" ended up worth nothing in the end. Harris would have rewarded them for that help, but Trump of course hates them for it because it was largely directed at him.
Chrome has just been a better product for the last 10 to 15 years.
Every other company has just failed to make a good browser because they lack the incentives to do so (have gone back and forth as a Firefox user).
The only competitive browsers are those already built on chrome or safari.
I'm not personally a big fan of Safari but it's bigger issue is that it is only available on one platform whereas the web is naturally cross platform.
Almost by definition Safari can't be the "winning" browser.
This feels like ruling that the iPhone is a monopoly in the US and that Apple needs to divest from phones.
Edit: to those replying I 100% don't agree with all the decisions chrome make, very importantly ad block.
But just survey the actual browser market in the last 10 years to understand Chrome's dominance
Easy to gain market share when one of the tent pole internet services is experiencing regular breakages.
Can someone in this thread who have swapped between Firefox/Chrome explain the problems they run into ultimately driving them back to Chrome?
I'm not optimistic that it'll happen, but I'd still like to see it.
The only reason it stopped being the #1 browser is that Chrome came out and was better...
Even though people had to go out of their way to download on all computers
I feel like most people here wouldn't understand that to inherently indicate superior quality. I'd argue that the absolute dominance of Chrome is mostly evidence of the monopoly power that Google yields. It got on top via search, becomes the gateway to the web for people, leverages that to sell advertisement and also convince tons of people to use the browser. It's been all leverage.
I'd also disagree on it even being a better browser. Firefox has issues, but on actual usability and feeling like a user agent, it's head and shoulders above Chrome. It is more flexible, more customizable, and I find that it runs significantly better on every website that isn't owned by Google. If Chrome was a better browser, they wouldn't have had to sabotage Firefox on their sites for years (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349357).
It's Google that can't compete, if they have to use back-channels and leverage their other powers to maintain dominance. They aren't competing with the product alone.
* This is not a Biden-admin lawsuit. It was launched by the first Trump admin.
* Of the 14 co-plaintiffs, only 1 (CA) is a state that didn't vote for Trump in 2024. The Colorado Plaintiff States include another 16 red states, for a total of 29 red states represented.
As much as it's trendy in 2025 to talk about this admin as though it's entirely unprincipled, it's actually been doing exactly what it said it would do to satisfy its base. This lawsuit was started by them in the first place and if the list of Attorneys General is anything to go by has overwhelming support from the base that Trump is acting to satisfy. Google's not getting out of this from just a small amount of kowtowing now, it's far too late for that.
Why? Because it's essentially the defacto way/portal/thing to access to the biggest source of information humanity has: the web.
It's too big and important for any 1 company - tho saying that, I'm okay with Windows being owned by Microsoft which is (was) basically the same thing in a way.
My unsolicited advice to Google: sacrifice it, focus on AI. To all the people on the Chrome team? They should be financially taken care of, and should be part of the foundation that develops it if they want. The foundation should not be controlled by Alphabet, but should be truly public.
This is all probably too vague and unspecified for you lot...but it is just an idea.
Windows is much worse by most metrics. I can't fork Windowsium and build (and sell) my own fully-compatible, 99.999999% R&D paid for by Microsoft, OS.
> This is all probably too vague and unspecified for you lot...but it is just an idea
It is a bit vague :) In that: who pays for it? Who decides what features are in or out? Public utilities are generally what we make things when they're feature complete and the only challenge is rolling it out as cheaply as possible. But it feels like web browsers have a way to go yet. There's nothing stopping the US government (or any government) from bulding their own browser off Chromium right now. Nothing needs selling or splitting.
Forgive me for being blunt, but what idea? If the question is who is supposed to fund Chromium and Firefox going forward then you haven't actually offered any ideas.
Most Arguments in both directions are basically unprovable and amount to propaganda at this point. Degrees matter. Saying “people voted for this”, which both sides say with different directionality, is mostly away to convince people to either support or fight against the administration. Everyone voted for their interpretation of thing X, but will oppose it if implementation Y causes impact Z which they perceive as bad.
The first Trump admin was positively benign and adult compared to the current one. The first Trump admin had significant checks and balances on its behaviours.
And of course almost everyone who served in that first Trump admin campaigned against/warned about Trump this time, which should be telling. Or maybe they're just "RINOs" or something.
"As much as it's trendy in 2025 to talk about this admin as though it's entirely unprincipled"
This administration is extraordinarily unprincipled and self-serving. The DOJ as a tool for use at the leisure and to the benefit of the president/king is blatantly in the open[1].
"Google's not getting out of this from just a small amount of kowtowing now"
I would bet real money they absolutely will get out from this. Not only that they will get out from it, they'll get the public "treated unfairly" speech as well.
[1] - There is a major plot point in the 1993 movie The Pelican Brief where the simple insinuation that the president influenced the DOJ in any way would be so politically devastating that it would destroy his administration. This is so quaint now. How far the country has fallen.
Yes and no.
Lots of quick sweeping local changes were promised to specific states during trump’s rallies in those states only for him to go silent on them post election.
I don’t think flip flopping on tariffs was part of his platform either.
But generally, yes, this is what was voted for.
He takes the gish gallop approach to governing, so it’s hard to make any large statements like this without being a little incorrect.
That said, Chrome is not really viable on its own, and it's the wrong "split" to enforce. The correct split is "down the middle" right through the money-making businesses - create two Googles, with their own search and search/web ads and ensure (through antitrust oversight) that they compete with each other instead of rubbing each other's back. Spin out Cloud and Android/Play Store into separate companies. Separate all four from Alphabet. The rest of the money-losing properties (including Chrome) can be distributed arbitrarily, it doesn't really matter.
Or something to that effect. As long as ads are split down the middle, and separated from Alphabet, that's all that really matters. Unless this happens, any "antitrust" against Google is bullshit for those who can't read its SEC filings.
Separately, why is having tech giants a pure advantage? These companies got big by innovating, but the innovation slows down when they are big. Sounds to me that we should be regularly clearing old growth to let new ideas break through
Also, it’s harder for international companies to buy, say, Google, than a browser-only company, just through the amount of capital needed to put up a credible offer.
Global tech companies do not compete in China, the market is brutal for non Chinese companies with level of espionage, theft, sabotage that is allowed.
It is really small world for big tech, the same 5-10 companies dominate most of the world in most frequently used consumer products, and using that dominance to crowd out competitors in every new product category
(1) which is banned in few major markets like India already even if the US reverses the ban
This is absolutely not true. Most phones in Africa are Chinese now. Chinese internet companies are all over Asia outside of Japan/SK. Chinese cars (EVs, which arguably are tech), are now world-wide.
People complain about whataboutism, but the Apple versus almost any other 'monopoly' is insane. You can switch browsers within the next 30s, you can't install an app from a third party vendor ever on iOS. [1]
[1] Yes I know you can pay $100 a year, and then compile your own/open source apps weekly and move them to your device. No this is not a reasonable solution.
let's permit the firefighters to leave the firehouse even though they can't tend to all the fires simultaneously
For Google search, the quality has gone down enormously and yet it has lost approximately 0 market share. It is still utterly dominant. This was used to push people to Chrome, and still is. It was used to dominate the web ads market. And so on: market power used to increase market power in other markets. Classic anticompetitive behaviour.
Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly in any market. Even in the US, where their position is strongest relative to Android, it still isnt even close to a monopoly.
iOS isn't a monopoly so there is nothing wrong with it being locked down. It doesn't pressure "teens" into anything. Teenagers will pick up on anything they can to create peer pressure themselves. They would just say "lol nice loser android phone" when they saw the phone in person anyway lol.
The problem is the anti-competitive behavior. Businesses are generally rational actors, so clearly our system isn't working. It's unclear what the boundaries are until years in court, and even then it only applies to a single company.
Why is an ads company owning a browser any different than a phone company (Apple) or an operating system vendor?
It's already bad enough they are removing ad block functionality and then a day later rolling out new ad-free plans for YouTube, what a cawinky dink
It is when Google compromises the privacy/security of Chrome because of their Ads/OS business.
For example, allowing first party cookies to be a maximum of 400 days versus Safari and Firefox where it is 7 days. These cookies are required by ads retargeting which is critical to effective ecommerce campaigns.
It also supports browser fingerprinting by advertisers which means that every random API Chrome adds (and they add a lot) directly improves their Ads revenue.
Maybe we'll soon have Apache Chrome!
From a security standpoint, I'm sure it's more complicated, but UBO and warning dialog boxes about downloading files to your device, logging into services without 2FA would probably solve a lot of those problems. Does a billion dollar corp have to be involved considering how much has gone into Linux from people's pro bono efforts?
Manifest v3 and Web Integrity API are prominent examples of Google's team shaping how all Chromium based browsers will be, regardless of pushback (though they relented with the latter for now).
In theory, yes. In reality, the more diverged forks become from mainstream the more expensive they become to maintain, until eventually it becomes entirely unsustainable. With the sheer number of Chrome patches Google churns out, the level of divergence where maintainence becomes overwhelming is actually pretty low. It’s like trying to handle Niagara Falls with a Solo cup.
So in effect, what Google says goes.
It doesn't matter if they actually go through with it or greatly inflate the number like OpenAI, Softbank and co did.
Ladybird, servo, and Flow are new browsers currently being built. These new browsers are not derived from any of the big three browser engines: Google Chromium, Apple WebKit, and Mozilla Gecko. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_browser_engines
It will be a be new Chrome entity I guess, spun off the Google mothership. However, how does it make money is very unclear to me, like how? Selling the search bar to highest bidder, a.k.a Google still?
You mean.. who would want to buy an app that has 65% marketshare?
I just imagine some shady company (shadier than google at least) buying it to slap ads all over inside the browser itself.
And I also disliked Chrome. Especially the direction of the web they are using Chrome to push forward.
And I also disliked Electron.
But I am against DOJ forcing Google to sell off Chrome. Especially when most of Chrome is open sourced. I think this is just plain wrong. Why dont we force Apple to open source macOS? Microsoft to Open Source Windows? Or Selling off Office. SpaceX to sell its Engine?
Being open source has nothing to do with it. Of course selling it off won't necessarily accomplish the desired result since at the end of the day it isn't the legal ownership per se that results in the influence.
While I agree outsized influence that chrome does on global web standards, it is not like Apple doesn't or couldn't invent something as well. The reality is that no one has the incentive to make better web technology.
If Google sold off Chrome, who will buy it? Are Google even allowed to make another browser based on same technology? What is everyone just installed that again? Selling off Chrome doesn't make any sense at all. And as you said. Their influence on development of Blink is still, Google.
Also why bring up disliking something as though you were ahead of the curve only to stop short of actually being in favor of taking action?
Sure, but it's exacerbating the Blink monoculture anyway.
Then what happens to Chromebooks? Can Google no longer ship a browser with Android?
Besides, unless you have an Android - which is only 30% of the US market or a Chromebook, everyone who uses Chrome went through the process of downloading it and made a purposeful choice to use it
I personally don’t think it’s fair to single Google out and leave Apple and Microsoft alone. It may be overly cynical, but I think Google is in its current situation because it has fostered political enemies on both sides.
This is when antitrust is needed most, by design. There's a bit of understanding you need to do, but not only is it not dumb, what you said about nobody wanting to buy chrome is actually part of the proof of why google needs to be broken up and why chrome is an ideal target for doing so. The browser market needs to be made competitive again.
I can't see Chrome surviving as a standalone product - where is the revenue? I am sure someone will buy it and try to create some "premium" version, but ultimately it will wither and die I expect.
- A pure focus on web browser monetization could lead to some interesting enterprise options. Presumably there'll be a lot of attempts to leverage Chromium, and an aggressive fork at some point.
- As AI proliferates, can they pull additional revenue by getting revshare from subscription AI products, alongside SEM? Or even revshare?
This could also change the calculus for Apple building a search engine. If they could get an independent Chrome to sign on, with some data sharing provisions to help with development, they'd have a huge leg-up.
Alternatively, maybe they try to create a fusion of search results and AI from a variety of providers, so they can monetize SERPs themselves.
Revenue seems incredibly strong. My question would be whether they could get back to aggressive product execution, given the size of the codebase.
And start charging for everything else out there like maps, street view, and browser. And buy cloudflare while at it. Push themselves into everything related to connectivity and internet properties.
The search business is the cash flow that is being a thorn in the side of Google. And it doesn’t even make sense in its vision anymore.
But it does solve an important problem: Who in their right mind would buy Chrome? It's not a profitable business to be in, without the surrounding ad business, and in turn the insane amount of traffic from Google Search.
Almost by definition, anyone who would be interested in buying Chrome and turning it into a commercial product shouldn't be allowed to buy it. The only buyer I can imaging is OpenText.
This. If Search + Google Ads is independent from Android + Chrome + Gmail, it will choke the user-data flow that Google Ads platform is feeding on. This opens doors to new competing search engines!
Android + Chrome + Gmail needs to be bundled with hardware purchases, like Apple does with Safari + iCloud. This will create incentive to make them actually privacy focused, and could be its selling point. No need to feed Google Ads with data anymore!
Yeah, dreaming.
Especially not when there are other third party browsers. Wouldn't say no to a government funded one that was secure and tested with government services.
There are some issues with the big tech giants that is likely harmful to consumers and the industry, and I'd welcome anti-trust investigations into all of them, but I feel like minor issues like browsers is an attempt to pretend like meaningful regulation and government control has been applied, while the real problems are ignored.
Which government, though? The US is mired in corruption at the moment, and the UK is taking an extended dump on privacy, Russia is … Russia and China doesn't really believe in privacy or freedom of speech, among other things.
Yes because the government is so well run with competent people waiting in line to join it in the era of DOGE?
Do you think that a web browser would be free of politics?
The same government services that require things like recaptcha to work? The situation in the US is far worse than just "I need to use a BigTech browser to access government services".
From 90% to 80%. Maybe even 70%. I don’t see it falling below that. Does DOJ think that hypothetical market shares could be 40% Google, 30% Bing, 20-30% rest. I don’t think this is possible short of banning Google or making it extremely cumbersome to access Google (for example, making it impossible to set Google as default). Which makes this whole exercise seem pointless.
Then we also come to the realm of justice. Google built Chrome (no easy task), fair and square. Chrome is a better browser engine than that of most competitors, so much so that its competitors use the same browser engine (Firefox and Safari Exempted). (Chromium is also open source). Why should Google be forced to sell Chrome? Is the assumption here that by the default the government owns everything you make, and the fact that you get to keep something you made is because of the benevolence of the government? This doesn’t seem like a good precedent. The government can’t even justify this as some big harm to society like it’s an addictive drug. What’s the consumer harm here? Is it that Google has monopoly pricing on serving ads to users, so if any company wants to do digital marketing, they have to pay whatever price Google sets?
In the end, this just seems like a big unnecessary mess. The govt surely must have better things to do.
It's been long enough now that there are significant differences, but Chrome started from the same base as Safari. The teams had different perspectives, so Chrome forked Safari's internals and called the result Blink.
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/188271/trump-profit-presiden...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-b...
It’s because people don’t have a choice.
There's an arguable point if Google doesn't give up Chromebooks anyways, the DOJ should force them to.
My children basically are required by government to use Google products in school unless I want to pay for private school, which is kinda insane on its face.
I genuinely can't think of anyone, of any political stripe, outside of Google and its employees and investors, who thinks Google should have the power it has now. Honestly, the degree of pushback this is getting on HN is shocking to me. Google is massively anti-competitive and spends a ton of energy hurting startups to its own benefit.
I hope the DOJ gets its way on this, and I hope they aggressively pursue anti-trust actions against other organizations in similar positions - Oracle, Epic Systems, and Meta all come to mind.
Apple would prefer everyone use native apps, they run an app store. Most companies prefer apps, you can’t modify or inspect them or easily block ads within them. Apps can trap users inside embedded browsers with app-based surveillance, like when you click profile links in Instagram or TikTok.
The world without a free high quality browser is a worse one.
But at the same time maintaining Chromium is a pretty thankless endeavor and I don't see any entity with that capability. It's much bigger than Linux, and the developers are employees, not volunteers.
The best possible outcome I can imagine is if Google is required to spin off Chromium into a nonprofit that would be independent but they are required to fund it for many years. The nonprofit would need some kind of oversight from adversarial companies to avoid collusion with Google or any other company.
DOJ asks for judgement requiring Google to divest Chrome [pdf] (31 points 30 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296045
I can even see him spending less money on it than during Twitter acquisition.
What would be the difference between Google shoveling money at Safari and Firefox for default search and shoveling money at some “independent” Chrome?
It was dumb when they battled with microsoft's IE, and it's especially dumb when they battle Google's Chrome.
Chrome isn't just another google product, it is central to its search engine, they did an ofshoot into a browser because they found they needes to effectively develop a headless browser to scrape some js and mixed media websites.
Sigh.