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?
Maybe 10 years ago, but which ones do it now? thinkpads and HP machines, at least, ship with Edge as the default. Dell or something?
Windows is also _hyper_ aggressive about pushing Edge now too. Like it's nuts how hard it pushes it, to the point that it embarrasses people who do actually prefer Edge. "Recommending" at every turn that you not switch, having the edge browser itself warn against downloading Chrome, pushing edge into various OS-level browser launches even if it's not your default, and, of course, randomly resetting the browser default on various updates.
edit: at least from this page, it's edge by default on at least some dell machines too, but I haven't owned one in so long I won't say that for sure: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000128257/how-to-ch...
It doesn't seem to be a default on PCs.
This is ancedotal sure but it's several hundred datapoints from the cheapest student focused budget laptops(running windows not chrome os) to business grade laptops from the big 3 (HP/Dell/Lenovo). Apple ships Safari by default and every linux distro I have used ships firefox or a spinoff of firefox by default.
So in my experience Chrome is actively installed by the local it help (me, things are just plain broken for some use cases on non-chrome). I personally do not use Chrome, that doesn't mean I won't make it the default for every PC I touch for an enduser purely because I get less calls for support when users are using chrome.
It's no secret that I feel like other search engines are worse that Google even though Google's results are nearly unusable.
Google built a mote by having a better product, nobody else tried to compete and now it's become nearly impossible to compete. I actively avoid Chromium based browsers personally but even then I need to have one installed because even in Firefox and Safari derived browsers things are broken or website just plain don't work (https//f1.tv actively does not work on firefox as an example, unless they have since backtracked)
That's the claim, but I've never seen a pre-built with chrome installed (other than a chromebook obviously), let alone configured as the default. Which OEMs are pre-installing it as the default?
That's an understatement. Microsoft Edge is, in fact, a more privacy invasive browser than Chrome. And that was a pretty high bar.
In the EU, straight from the get-go, Edge presents users with the IAB interstitial, informing them that Edge is going to share their data with the entire advertising industry. Note that Chrome doesn't do this, as Google only wants you to share data with them, and it's not the browser that asks for consent. Edge's IAB interstitial is filled with dark patterns as well, such as legitimate interests being unlawfully declared.
Edge is also filled with Microsoft's telemetry, which you can't turn off. Every browser instance, of course, comes with a unique ID that's reported to Bing Ads. Using Edge without Bing is fairly difficult. And end-to-end encryption for its synchronization feature isn't supported.
I entirely understand why people want to degoogleify, but picking Bing in that process is fairly stupid.
Firefox compliance is another story, but very mild compared to IE. Chrome also had to deal with compatibility issues when Firefox was the leader, but Mozilla relinquished their leadership position because it was very important to them to fire their CEO / original writer of Javascript for ideological reasons - he had given $1000 to an anti-abortion NGO, which is an unacceptable thoughtcrime. Then they spent their time politicking and not enough coding.
Sounds like the history of browsers is just made of strategic mistakes.
That's not what he did. He donated for California's Prop 8, which opposed same-sex marriage, in 2008. I'm personally not judging, as many US progressives have forgotten that during those days, even Obama opposed same-sex marriage. But it's important to get the facts straight, even when being sarcastic.
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> Then they spent their time politicking and not enough coding.
Mozilla's management certainly is guilty of blunders, but I'm pretty sure the developers who have worked on Mozilla don't feel like they've spent time “politicking”.
The failure of Firefox in the marketplace starts from the fact that it's pretty hard to compete with a browser that's funded with more than 1 billion $ per year. And people may not remember much about the launch of Chrome, but it was literally years ahead of its competition. Have a look at its famous comic book, with which it was announced, describing its design and philosophy, and count the years it took for the competition to catch up (across the board, including Safari): https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
I mean, sure, you can blame that on politics, but I don't think anyone was able to stop the decline and when Brendan Eich resigned, people were already talking about Chrome's hegemony and Firefox dying.
This comment keeps popping up. Every time I ask the commenter to show me some sites that dont work with Firefox. Nobody has ever shown me one. I think people are stuck in the past here, Firefox has been absolutely fine for about 10 years now.
Closest would be Google's Android Flash Tool that uses WebUSB to image an Android phone. But that is more like a browser extensions versus a HTML5 application.
I have had numerous experiences with ZScaler, corporate man-in-the service, breaking web sites with Firefox. I need to use Chromium to upload to Virus Total. ZScaler even likes to brake web sites on Chromium and requires multiple reloads with minutes or hours between refresh.
Microsoft services with ZScaler break easily with Firefox and Chromium but work fine with Edge or MS Teams. Don't know if this intent to push users to Edge or just a correlation with ZScaler.
ZScaler developers, thanks for making my work life living hell with 30s or more latency and lack of ability to properly connect to web services and handle cross-VM HTTP testing.
This is not the only case btw, just a nice clearcut one
Of course, this doesn't appear that related to the DOJ's reasoning.
It's easy to say "just sell it" without thinking about the actual implications, but you're basically talking about destroying it. Maybe that's the point, but we should at least be honest about it.
If (say) Meta bought Edge, then they'd get the userbase and the trademark, but the product seems pointless. Why would Meta want a browser whose killer features are integrations with Bing and Office 365? If Meta wanted a browser, they'd make a "Meta-flavored Chromium."
Browsers are one of the most critical pieces of modern software infrastructure, both from a security-footprint perspective and as a vehicle for (mis-)information delivery, so maybe they're too important for ANY commercial entity to use them as a bludgeon to for their agenda.
If they no longer control the core project, then Google (or Microsoft) have a much harder job doing self-serving stuff. They could nuke Manifest v2 in THEIR Chromium derivative, but core Chromium isn't going to give it up-- the Operas and Vivaldis of the world don't have to spend their limited resources trying to unwind the change to keep a desired feature.
I don't see why divesting it necessarily means selling it to another company. Google could create a non-profit like Mozilla, or a for profit and float it as its own business.
There are a lot of seemingly simple "solutions" to this problem that just don't hold up under a modicum of scrutiny.
Any NGO receiving Chrome would be extremely vulnerable to spying, because of the immense power of having software installed on a billion computers.
My question is if Google has to divest from Chrome, would they be able to build a new web browser? In the article it said that they'd need approval for any new joint venture, collaboration, or partnership with any company that competes with Google in search or in search text ads.
It makes no mention of web browsers.
I'm not a lawyer, and didn't read the verdict, but your query is very Hacker News. Justice is not code. If Google is forced to divest from Chrome, it of course means it can't turn around and make the Google Dhrome browser. If Google did, they'd be sued for ignoring the verdict.
The proposal, filed Friday afternoon, says that Google must “promptly and fully divest Chrome, along with any assets or services necessary to successfully complete the divestiture, to a buyer approved by the Plaintiffs in their sole discretion, subject to terms that the Court and Plaintiffs approve.” It also would require Google to stop paying partners for preferential treatment of its search engine.
Think of it like MySQL and then MariaDB. So if Google sells Chromium to say Saleforce (they seem to buy everything) then Chrome is no longer Google's. Google would have complied with the verdict.
I suppose Google could sell the rights to their parts of the codebase, possibly the rights to future Googler contributions, admin rights to the repo, domains, trademarks, CI, hardware labs, and maybe some other things I'm forgetting... but in terms of the tech being developed and shipped, there isn't really anything substantive to sell.
Have you used a Windows PC lately? It seems like once a week I have to ignore/decline prompts to change my default browser to Edge.
I’m not sure PC makers have any say/control over this behavior.
Every time I visit my parents, I need to de-bing them again
The main reason even Microsoft gave up and rebased their browser on top of Chrome is because of the breakneck speed at which Google introduces new standards and features to the ecosystem. Having them be forced to slow down might be a good thing for browser diversity and the future of the Internet.
If Mozilla would fork Chromium now and base Firefox on their fork I would switch from Brave. The engine simply technically superior.
Hell, MS makes it super hard to even install Chrome now, including numerous irritating nag messages and ‘are you sure?!?’
>> The only viable business model for a web browser is to accept money from a search engine (Google, specifically) to be make them the default.
Mostly, it's just that giving away browsers for free as a source of garnering search traffic distorts the market.
Why would they pay the manufactures when they can just add annoying reminders and make it hard to switch in the OS they ship it with?
I think it must have been bundled with iTunes as I remember family members having Safari installed on Windows computers at the time.
But I think it being available for Windows right when Firefox and then later Chrome started to become popular didn't help - it was just some other browser that no one was recommending.
The only viable business model ... while the incumbent (IE, now Chrome) is allowed to give the product away for free in service of some other predatory agenda.
Unless you have a source for that, that's flat-out wrong. I've never heard of that, I've never seen that, and I can't find any supporting evidence of that.
> Here's StatCounter's estimates of desktop browser market share. The overwhelming majority of users are using their computer's default browser.
That's not what that graph shows. It doesn't show anything about defaults.
Not only is this not true for lots of manufacturers, but the minute you click on a web link anywhere in windows (help, start menu, etc) it opens in Edge, and Edge cannot be uninstalled on a windows machine.
People go out of their way to install Chrome because it's better than the competition. Just like they used to do for Firefox, back when Firefox was a better browser than the competition.
AFAIK, in the US, the default for:
- Windows: Edge
- Mac: Safari
- Ubuntu: Firefox
I think the claim that "Google just pays PC makers to make Chrome the default browser" needs a clear source.
