The Justice Department’s request represents the agency’s most aggressive attempt to break up a tech company since its antitrust case against Microsoft, which reached a settlement in 2001.
The only reason Chrome has been slowing down the deprecation of 3rd party cookies is because it would make it harder to do privacy invading tracking, and thus, would make Google less money.
No browser benefits from tracking. Only ad companies do.
Indeed, it’s a huge conflict of interest for an ad company to operate the most popular browser. Google being the gatekeeper for the internet is a really terrible situation for the web as a whole.
True. Same for Android.
I feel some form of that should be part of the approach. Splitting it carelessly would likely either:
A) result in no real change: ie. instead of allocating budgets within Google, they’ll just exchange money through deals and partnerships, as separate companies, but still having pretty much the same relationship between projects and level of control (Android & Chrome would continue favoring Google interests, even as independent companies), and they’ll keep being monopolies each within their own fields (I don’t see how that’s being addressed with the split).
B) result in independent projects that push for monetization and shady schemes to try and be profitable on their own (although, to be honest Mozilla has proven that being non-profit is not a shield against this either). This actually might be a good thing if the enshittification manages to get people to switch away from Chrome to a better alternative… but I wouldn’t be so sure of that (both that they would move, or that they’d choose a better one …as opposed to say MS Edge which has just as bad of a ruler).
I agree, the way governance is set up is very important, and even non profits can susceptible to perverse incentives as we see with Mozilla. Ideally, it would be something close to the way Linux Foundation is set up.
Indeed, and frankly Chrome should be operated as a non profit because browsers have become an essential service.
Absolutely.
The only reason Chrome has been slowing down the deprecation of 3rd party cookies is because it would make it harder to do privacy invading tracking, and thus, would make Google less money.
No browser benefits from tracking. Only ad companies do.
Indeed, it’s a huge conflict of interest for an ad company to operate the most popular browser. Google being the gatekeeper for the internet is a really terrible situation for the web as a whole.
True. Same for Android. I feel some form of that should be part of the approach. Splitting it carelessly would likely either:
A) result in no real change: ie. instead of allocating budgets within Google, they’ll just exchange money through deals and partnerships, as separate companies, but still having pretty much the same relationship between projects and level of control (Android & Chrome would continue favoring Google interests, even as independent companies), and they’ll keep being monopolies each within their own fields (I don’t see how that’s being addressed with the split).
B) result in independent projects that push for monetization and shady schemes to try and be profitable on their own (although, to be honest Mozilla has proven that being non-profit is not a shield against this either). This actually might be a good thing if the enshittification manages to get people to switch away from Chrome to a better alternative… but I wouldn’t be so sure of that (both that they would move, or that they’d choose a better one …as opposed to say MS Edge which has just as bad of a ruler).
I agree, the way governance is set up is very important, and even non profits can susceptible to perverse incentives as we see with Mozilla. Ideally, it would be something close to the way Linux Foundation is set up.