You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade.
So we’re going to force you sell your car.
What’s with the weird redirect? If the monopoly is directly caused by paying the grocery stores for placement, then stop that part.
We can see this exact redirect happening in the ruling in the U.S. vs Google court case.
Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.
[…]
For years, Google has secured default placements through distribution contracts. It has entered into such agreements with browser developers, mobile device manufacturers, and wireless carriers.
[…]
Because many users simply stick to searching with the default, Google receives billions of queries every day through those access points.
Judge Mehta
In the document:
It’s spelled out quite clearly that being the default is the monopolistic part and that’s caused by paying for it (which is then self-perpetuating as the placement is so valuable, the money generated by it pays for those default placements.)
Fair enough! Let’s stop that.
Let’s stop the monopoly by telling Google they can’t pay (certain? all?) companies to be the default search engine anymore. A step further could be forcing browsers should ask users what they want their default search engine to be.
This would be in line with how Apple was forced to allow for browser choice:
That’s a straight line from problem to solution.
A weird curvy-ass line between problem and solution is this strange solution that is being relentlessly proposed that Google should be forced to sell Chrome.
There is a recent round of news covering this that all point to the curvy-ass-line solution.
- USA Today: “Google will have to part with its dominant Chrome browser if the U.S. Department of Justice has its way.”
- WIRED: “the Department of Justice reiterated that Google should stop paying partners for search placement—and divest its dominant Chrome browser.”
- Ars Technica: “the government maintains that Chrome must go if the playing field is to be made level again.”
It’s true that Chrome ships with Google as the default search engine, because, ya know, they invested billions in Chrome and that’s how business works. But still, a more direct line from problem to solution is forcing default search engine choice, not a forced sale of Chrome itself.
Why do I care? The sale of Chrome is bad for the web.
I’ve written before that Chrome is unusual in that it’s really only particularly useful to Google:
Users don’t pay for Chrome. There aren’t ads in Chrome. There is no direct business model for Chrome. Unlike Safari and Firefox, nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default.
The value of Chrome is all tangential — it provides value to Google. Whoever buys it does not inherit that same tangential value, they would need to redirect what little of it they can somewhere else, likely fighting against the natural flow that has been baked into it since the beginning.
I’m not saying Google shouldn’t be forced to sell Chrome just because it’s only valuable to Google. But I do think Google should be allowed to have a browser. Google is a web business, that’s their whole thing. They made a browser to invest in the web itself because what is good for the web is good for Google, and happens to be good for all of us.
Allow me to be more clear about why Chrome is good for all of us.
When you look at (or otherwise experience) anything on a digital device, you’re looking at an operating system. That operating system was probably made by a private company who has total control over it. They have the right to do that, but that operating system exists to serve that company only and
56 Comments
xigency
Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web. This piece seems to be looking at Google at large (and I think all of Alphabet would be better scope there).
Certainly this would be unpopular here but I would be all for aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done historically, including vertical integrations.
Right now tech is a strange feudal state with hundreds of thousands of small teams anchored to a few hydra-like super-corporations on a consuming destructive rampage. Somehow, with the most advanced computer and technological systems to ever be known by man, we're looking to increase working hours and cut benefits, for "profits" that are not quite realized by the labor class or the end users.
Gonna be interesting to see what happens. I know Wall Street will place their bets for what they want to happen right along side what's obviously going to shake out once the market becomes 'rational.'
pluto_modadic
Alphabet tried to kill adblock in Chrome, so…
orionblastar
We can always use Chromium https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/
This is like if Microsoft was forced to sell Edge or Apple sold Safari.
I am thinking of switching from Chrome to Brave https://brave.com/
wordofx
If Google wasn’t such a trash company and using chrome to drive more revenue by farming data and preventing adblocks then no one would have a problem with chrome.
elif
This one struck me as a weird one as browser waves come and go and I feel like opera is the big swell rising at the moment anyway. The competitive component is there and alive and well.
What happens when this artificial friction causes chrome to lose network effect faster than natural, and we are ironically left with a different monopoly?
ohso4
> Users don’t pay for Chrome. There aren’t ads in Chrome. There is no direct business model for Chrome. Unlike Safari and Firefox, nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default.
They track you. There IS a business model for Chrome: monetizing user data.
thomassmith65
This is a panglossian take that belongs in the year 2005.
Google is less a 'web business' than it is an 'advertising business', a 'surveillance business', and a 'finance business'.
Consequently, it is false that 'what is good for the web is good for Google'. AMP, and the Ad-blocking prohibition are evidence of this.
Georgelemental
> They made a browser to invest in the web itself
But that investment isn’t neutral. It’s oriented towards making the Web a better place for Google to make money—not a better place for users to avoid being tracked by Google. Chrome’s dominant position means Google can kill any new web feature that would help users, but hurt Google’s bottom line.
NotYourLawyer
This is a laughably bad take.
motorest
This blogger doesn't seem to be aware of all the privacy problems that Chrome poses by the way it was designed to track and monitor all users' history and input and feed it to Google, even in incognito mode. All the blogger had to do is open Wikipedia's article on Chrome to check the huge section on privacy. But no, apparently that is too much research to ask. In fact, the word "privacy" is featured a total of zero times in the blog post.
It's hard to believe anyone can write a wall of text with so many assertions but fails to even touch on the central topic. You need to go way out of your way to be able to miss the point this hard.
sheepscreek
The issue with Chrome isn’t its ownership by Google. The problem lies in the fact that Google search is integrated into the very fabric of the browser at all levels. This creates an unfavorable and, frankly, unchallenged system that hinders competition. It’s the Achilles heel of unchecked capitalism.
paddw
What's unclear is who the buyer is supposed to be? Chrome's entire monetization is centered around its synergy with Google's ad business. Cutting off Chrome is so much messier, than the obvious, (although I fear it would itself have bad repercussions) decision to force them to sell Youtube.
est31
I agree. If Chrome is sold off, the new owners might think its uneconomic to maintain a (desktop) Linux port, keep it open source, or they might make it even less standards based than it is now.
streptomycin
I don't get the negative comments here. It's pretty simple I think…
– Google is banned from paying Firefox to be the default search engine -> Firefox has way less money -> Firefox development massively slows
– Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome, rather than using it to indirectly profit from the web in general like Google does -> Chrome probably goes to shit and development massively slows
So what now? Safari is going to be the leading force moving the web forward? The Chromium forks that are doing basically no browser engine work are going to suddenly find billions of dollars to invest in hiring developers? Someone will buy a time machine and go 10 years into the future to get a version of Ladybird that is comparable to what we have today in Chrome/Firefox? Just because you guys hate Google doesn't make any of those scenarios remotely plausible. And if you hate Google, there are much better ways to punish it than this.
glenstein
A trouble with breaking up Google is I think from one perspective the impact it would have is not to reduce monopoly tensions but to increase them. Because now it's Apple Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, we will have gone from G.A.M.M.A. to A.M.M.A. (I no longer know what the new acronym is supposed to be, now that FAANG is gone).
And I'm not sure that I would start with Google. I'm honestly not sure how I would rank the major players in terms of antitrust concerns, but I do think there probably should be an order of operations such that you don't go after the "wrong" one first, effectively consolidating the industry further rather than balancing it.
DavidManningCA
NotGoogleLobbiests.com?
Great source.
ForTheKidz
> because what is good for the web is good for Google
Counterpoint: funding via advertisement
rafram
The premise of this post is flawed. The government is trying to bar Google from paying browser vendors to make them the default: https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24300617/doj-google-sear…
> Other remedies the government is asking the court to impose include prohibiting Google from offering money or anything of value to third parties — including Apple and other phone-makers — to make Google’s search engine the default, or to discourage them from hosting search competitors. It also wants to ban Google from preferencing its search engine on any owned-and-operated platform (like YouTube or Gemini), mandate it let rivals access its search index at “marginal cost, and on an ongoing basis,” and require Google to syndicate its search results, ranking signals, and US-originated query data for 10 years.
I don’t think they’re going to get all of that, but it’s interesting, and it definitely doesn’t line up with the “sell your car” analogy in the post.
juunpp
Investment disclosure?
Forcing Chrome to display a search engine choice doesn't even begin to solve the issue. Chrome spies on you regardless, and it also banned UBO and other ad-blocking extensions. It is a product made to deliberately spy on and harvest more data from you.
Barrin92
The author is correct on this:
"Not so with the web. The web is a set of protocols and languages and file formats[…] Google, by virtue of having Chrome, invests heavily in the web itself"
Without a company like Google which functions like a public steward for the web there's little reason for anyone else to drive web development. The competitive market logic doesn't incentivize an open ecosystem because by definition there's no profit to be captured in it, it exists if you will because a benevolent player maintains it and makes money elsewhere.
An analog to this would be if you'd judge Red Hat's dominance in the commercial Linux space the same way and forced them to divest from the operating system market. There would be nobody stepping in, because there's no money in linux itself. It exists by virtue of a entity making money on adjacent markets and all the linux development happens because it's beneficial for them to drive adoption.
The only real alternative you could propose is straight up public funding, but a balkanized market is by its very logic not going to maintain the web, but vertically integrated alternatives, i.e. apps. It's something you can btw see in China which due to timing happened to leap frog over the open web and search and went straight to the hyper-competitive and for that reason proprietary world of platforms.
Okx
I don't think this is an accurate anaology. It's more like, you own the vast majority of grocery stores, and you make lemonade, and you force all the other grocery stores to only sell your lemonade.
To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google shouldn't be paying to be the default search engine, but that it shouldn't own both the browser and the search engine.
I think this harkens back to the anti-trust court case, United States v. Paramount Pictures, where the court ruled that the film studios cannot hold monopolies over the movie theatres, and that theatres must remain independent.
Similarly, browsers and search engines being independent is good for competition because the internet is too important to let a single company dictate how it is used.
willtemperley
The way they aggressively push Chrome on Gmail users with "Google recommends using Chrome" popups is enough to make me think this is exactly what needed to happen.
mystified5016
Developing a browser is fantastically difficult and expensive. How much of that is because of Google using Chrome's dominance to dictate web standards?
If instead web standards moved at a pace set by a standards body not incentivised to spy on users, how much more competition could exist in the browser space?
franze
Besides all the good points in that thread about why Google should definitely be forced to sell Chrome lets ad another one: The Google Discover Feed in Google Chrome (and Android and Google App) is by now up to 80% of the Traffic News-Sites get. Basically it is Instagram for News and massively used. So Google now controls how Users consume the News. (Also you still need AMP to perform there…)
glimshe
I find amazing that, in today's web, the inaner a point is, the firmer is its proponent's conviction. Today's Google is the opposite of what is good for the web; it's a business led by a McKinsey bean counter and his henchmen, people who destroyed one of the most innovative companies the world has ever known and turned into a cancer who will only stop taking a cut of everything we do when it kills its host, the Internet.
pessimizer
I think he's confused. Google has to sell Chrome for reasons unrelated to whether Google was paying to be the default on their competitors products.
Google has to sell Chrome for reasons that don't even imply fault or wrongdoing. It lowers the level of competition to an unacceptable level for Google to own Chrome; and when Google owns Chrome, the temptation to do things like pay to be the default search engine in your competitors products in order to manipulate their behavior is too high.
The fact that they were actually doing something like that is a separate problem. And it will not be fixed by punishing them, it will be fixed by telling them to stop doing it. This is a long overdue intervention, not a criminal trial.
RajT88
> They have the right to do that, but that operating system exists to serve that company only and entirely.
See, here and I thought the primary purpose of software was to benefit the users.
About what you would expect from an article which sounds like it is going to play apologist to big tech monopolies.
CaffeineLD50
Being forced to give away Unix was a great remedy for AT&Ts monopoly. "But that makes no sense! AT&T isn't a computer company, why should it be forced to stop making operating systems for profit?"
Microsoft welded Explorer into the guts of its OS so they could say, after forcing it to be true, that the browser was an essential part of the system. But Microsoft made business software, why should it have to change IE? That's crazy!
I wouldn't be surprised if this guy was some astroturfed paid lobbyist for Alphabet's PR firm. Would you?
BrenBarn
It's wild that the author points to all the Google people writing W3C specs as if that's a positive sign. I'm not quite pessimistic enough to say all those people are 100% corporate shills, but there's no reason to expect that the stuff that gets into the W3C via Google is somehow magically detached from Google's profit motives. Google's effect on web standards is largely just another form of icky "embrace and extend" shenanigans.
aktuel
Could there be a better steward for Chrome in theory? Sure. My guess is that in practice the successor would be worse or about the same since it is all about money in the end.
hilbert42
"I’m not saying Google shouldn’t be forced to sell Chrome just because it’s only valuable to Google. But I do think Google should be allowed to have a browser."
There's a middle position here, and although Google won't like it, it may be better than Google having to sell Chrome off—that is upon first use would be to ask users if they want to disable all forms of telemetry.
Right, many would choose to disable telemetry, but then many would not do so because they either couldn't give a damn about privacy or they may want to take advantage of say targeted advertising.
Whatever happens, there's a fundamental problem that has to be addressed here and that's how to make the web a more equitable place for all players both big and small.
One of the major problems with new technologies is that shortly after their introduction those who introduced them are often overrun by more business-savvy entrepreneurs who find it dead easy to monopolize the tech (we've seen this repeatedly from say the car industry through to operating systems—like MS and Windows, etc.).
By the time government determines that a monopoly exists it's often too late as unwinding the status quo proves very difficult and disruptive (imagine Social Media if rules had been worked out before it had been introduced, if they had then the scene nowadays would be very different).
When examining what constitutes a monopoly one has to look at what's involved. For example, economies of scale enter the picture—having say only one huge producer of steel would be a monopoly as there'd be no competition and steel—a critical commodity—prices would high so a better solution would be to have two or three large producers to encourage competition. This is what's happened in say the oil and motor vehicle industries. Moreover, it'd make no sense to strangle these large industries by making them comply with regulations that would enable the smallest of small manufacturers sans adequate resources to compete on an equal footing—everyone would end up worse off.
The trouble with the web—perhaps more so than with any other tech throughout history—is that because of its intrinsic nature it's been easier for the powerful (Big Tech) to monopolize the tech. It's also meant that the monopolies that now run the web not only became so almost overnight but also they're now entrenched—set in concrete so to speak—which now make them very difficult to regulate. This all developed so very quickly that unfortunately it happened in a regulations-free environment.
What makes the web very different to other tech—to say those that use physical materials—is that it's very scalable; that is, it's possible for huge monopolies such as Google, Microsoft, etc. to coexist with smaller entities without the smaller ones being stifled. The trouble is that that's not what's happened, monopolistic practices such as Chrome and like deliberately channeling web traffic to Big Tech's sites has effectively distorted the way the web works.
One could argue that the simple solution is to use an independent browser but there are many reasons why this is solution is far from ideal. For starters, web protocols—many of which have been forced on web users by Big Tech—are now so complex and convoluted that designing a fully compatible web browser from scratch is a very difficult and challenging undertaking.
In essence, the demands of Big Tech have been such that they've raised minimal entry level for participation on the web to a point where small players have had to sacrifice both their independence and visibility if they want their presence to be viable. That is, the present state of the web is somewhat analogous to those industries that require economies of scale to function—unless one owns either a 'steel mill'-sized infrastructure or at least has access to one then one's pretty much left out in the cold. For the vast majority who want to participate the obvious solution is to gain access to Big Tech's web—and that means they can only do so on its terms—terms which are often unfair and punitive if violated.
No matter how one looks at it, the web nowadays is effectively a monopoly run by a few large players. The purpose of antitrust law is to flatten the playing field for all, so whatever regulators decide to do with Chrome they need to take these factors into account.
jimmont
It's interesting to see where the economics align with software. Web advertising paired with search and a browser. And it worked. I can't recall a better outcome supporting modern communication than Chrome and all it contains. The harmony between the business, software and market need was very well aligned.
That's falling apart now due to LLM's taking over much of what previously was search, and Google's innovator's dilemma between AI/LLM and traditional search. While the revenues are stronger than ever this seems unlikely to continue long term. So the dynamic is changing naturally.
Reminds me of how a strange contemporary religion where believers families take over a planet, resulted in this group building an amazing genealogy web service (familysearch.org). Or how US hegemony naturally leads to it's military, or how the theocratic monarchy of ancient Egypt was good for the masonry industry–even affecting modern tourism, or how Roman roads form the paths leading to today's major European cities.
throw_a_grenade
> You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade.
> So we’re going to force you sell your car.
This is b*llocks. Google financed being monopolist in cars with profits from its monopoly on lemonade, which they then used to perpetuate the monopoly on lemonade. We can't solve lemonade problem for now, but we can easily fix the car monopoly problem and break the feedback loop between the two.
jmyeet
This is really about paying to be the default search engine. How that goes for Google depends on the details.
If nobody can pay to be the default, then it's an absolute win for Google. This would save Google billions of dollars and many of those users will use Google anyway. Google is really paying so nobody else can.
If other companeis can pay to be the default, then it's a much more mixed bag. It'll hurt Firefox and Apple because nobody can pay what Google can and with Google out of the picture, people won't have to pay as much anyway.
Divestment of Chrome is a separate issue. I don't see how this can work as an independent business. People won't pay for a browser. Selling user data doesn't seem like a sustainable business. I know I wouldn't use that.
t
It's really time for browsers to become a common good.
arcmechanica
Better idea than v3
DeathArrow
Forcing Google to sell Chrome isn't enough.
We need healthy alternatives to Chrome.
jsmo
Paid for by Google?!
kweingar
I've brought this up before, but I never got a response and I'm really interested what people think the business case is here. I keep wondering what a buyer would actually value beyond Chrome's userbase. Chrome is just Chromium with Google integrations, similar to how Edge is Chromium with Microsoft integrations.
If a company acquires Chrome, they don't have many choices: re-establish Google integration deals (so the divestiture would be pointless), replace Google integrations with their own (becoming just another Chromium distro in a sea of Chromium distros), or just monetize the existing userbase.
A Chrome acquisition doesn't include unlimited control over Chromium. Chromium is open source, with contributions from many organizations (who retain the copyright to their contributed code). Google can only sell what it exclusively owns: the brand, infrastructure, signing keys, etc. The real force behind Chromium is having a critical mass of engineers all pushing in generally the same direction. You can't necessarily just buy that, especially when you wouldn't own exclusive rights. Any other company is free to poach engineers and fork the project.
Edited to add: if Microsoft sold VS Code to, say, Oracle… don't you think that another company would leap at the opportunity to fork the project? Would the userbase and the thin layer of closed-source Microsoft customizations really be worth that much?
gerash
Most Google related threads boils down to these "woke" exaggerated cliched responses in the comments such as "evil trackers", "you are the product", etc.
Guess what, Netflix tracks your watching habits. It's called a recommendation algorithm there. Spotify tracks your listening habits and so on and so forth.
ksynwa
Is there a name for this line of argumentation? The guy is obsessing over how document is articulated and disregarding how Chrome's dominance and Google owning it empowers Google to be monopolistic by, for example, having disproportionate power to drive web standards, having Google as the default search engine in its already dominant browser, having popular Google owned services not play nice with competing browsers, etc., just because the document he is quoting does not spell it out.
Side question: If hypothetically Google is forced to sell off Chrome, who would buy it?
Nuzzerino
I’m going to laugh if Elon buys it.
robin_reala
I just discovered that Google refuses to support any assistive tech on Workspaces unless the user is using Chrome: https://support.google.com/a/answer/33864
They can’t be forced to sell soon enough.
maxglute
What else has Google sold and how did they end up? SketchUp dodged a bullet.
renegat0x0
To be honest I think it does not matter.
I wish they split search from Google. Either you are search business, or ad business.
wruza
I think that this must be done, but will have vanishingly small effect anyway. Browsers are software monsters and making one your lap dog through non-directly-financial means is a low-brainer if you’re google.
They will likely relax firefox live support afterwards to weaken its org structure, and new-chrome will seek contracts like search/etc and they will invent something like “feature requests with benefits” which aren’t exactly illegal.
The only true way is revolution against standards and grounding the cost of a browser to viable levels. It will be pain like 2->3 or ESM, and likely much worse, but we made it through before.
My only worry is that it will become even shittier to program for, because we lost sense of that 20 years ago.
pjmlp
There is no Web any longer, saying otherwise is wishful thinking.
Everyone pushing for Chrome forks, and Electron garbage has effectively turned the Web into ChromeOS for all practical purposes.
Firefox is no longer relevant, and Safari only resists thanks to Apple stance on iDevices.
snackernews
If Google sells are they also barred from making open source contributions to Chromium? From being the primary direction setter?
wolvesechoes
Imagine being such a bootlicker.
bmacho
[flagged]
KaiserPro
The author raises a good point, but tangentially:
"if google doesn't pay for chrome, who will make it better? and who will make it secure"
This is a valid concern.
However, for those of us who remember the time before chrome, the web was dominated by IE, which kneecapped security and innovation.
Its the same with mobile safari, a lack of competitors is bad for health.
The issue is, google has embedded a shit ton of metrics gathering into chrome, which is hugely anti competitive.
ripped_britches
So many flawed assumptions in this article
How about Google making flutter? How is that not an awesome attempt to make mobile app development unified and easier for developers?
Also, selling your car? No a more apt metaphor would be selling the lemonade squeezing equipment business that you also hold a monopoly in.
I’m not arguing for the merits of forcing Google to sell chrome, but I think the articles points are off based either way.
metalrain
So what happens if Google sells Chrome? Who will buy it? Will they be as advertising/tracking heavy as Google is? Is there any other reason to own Chrome?
Is it any better if Meta, Alibaba, Microsoft or any other big company with money to buy Chrome owned Chrome?
youngtaff
I actually think they should be made to divest YouTube and non search based ads businesses (what was DoubleClick etc.) along with GTM and GA
fmajid
The DOJ's proposed remedy is structural separation, which is really the only way to prevent malicious compliance. I'm actually surprised they went for it, given how thoroughly neutered American antitrust has become under assault from the noxious Chicago School.
Apreche
Depends who it is sold to.
If it goes to a terrible company like Oracle or Meta, then yeah, it will be bad.
If it goes to say, the Apache Software Foundation, that could be fantastic.
alangibson
Google is emphatically not a web business. They are an advertising business. You should expect their priorities in product development to reflect that.