DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

Do Elon now. He owns way too much shit and always tries for a monopoly. Start by nationalizing star link.
- Nationalizing under that administration? Who would that help?
  
  America, when they stab each other to death, each shouting Sic Semper
- Why nationalize it? Surely treating Starlink like a utility and putting it under an independent org would be better, no? Keep politics out of it and let ISPs pay for access like how MVNOs like Mint Mobile work, except prevent the entity that owns it from providing service directly.

The DOJ is asking the court to force Google to promptly and fully divest itself of Chrome, along with any data or other assets required for its continued operation. It is essentially aiming to take the Chrome user base—consisting of some 3.4 billion people—away from Google and hand it to a competitor
Fuck yes, shatter that shit.
- Shatter it and probably have it bought out by Elon.
  
  Seriously. The only people willing to pay what it's "worth" will end up doing the same thing (or worse).
  What we need are some actual privacy laws with teeth, so that the data isn't worth as much to begin with.
  
  Elon's a dunce, so he'll probably enshittify it so badly that people will leave. So google is weakened and chrome dies (at least, i hope in a good outcome)
- Yeah but is it Elon&friends who will get to buy it?
  
  The optimist in me hopes not, but only time will tell.
  If he does i hope he tanks it so badly that it loses a huge chunk of market share - ideally when ladybird is ready.
- The court still has to decide. Final verdict this august. There absolutely no way Google doesn't call upon the current administration to help out. Let's not celebrate before the final verdict. We don't know whether it's really final either or whether google can appeal, because if they can, it'll probably take a few years before anything really happens. Maybe we'll even see a new administration by then.
  Anti Commercial-AI license

Google says government proposals would "harm America’s consumers."
Says the company that couldn't stand by the core value "don't be evil".
- Musk will be champing at the bit to own a controlling share of both of these. It disgusts me to agree with them but they're right. This is the single worst possible time to try and push this through.
  
  This is the single worst possible time to try and push this through.
  Which is why it's happening now, I agree.
  But we, the non-billionaires are still better off after any monopoly split. It's hard to express how incredibly bad powerful monopolies are. The fact that another billionaire will be the buyer sucks, but it's no reason to back away from forcing the legally required split.
- as if america's consumers aren't quite willing to be harmed at this point

Monkey Paw:
Chrome is now owned by X
Its now known as Xrome
X for the swastica, and rome for the "roman" (aka: nazi) salute
- Ykno what good. Maybe it'll cause Mozilla to get off their asses and DO SOMETHING.
  
  The monkey giggles. Mozilla completely pivots to adtech & AI.
  P.S. for the record, I continue using a Firefox fork and don't plan on stopping. Criticism where it's due, but I still think they're the best option.
  
  You know what, good. Maybe it'll cause the people who keep using Chrome because they don't give two shits about their privacy to get off their asses and use something else.
  Just like whole tribes are refusing to move from WhatsApp to Signal, because they say they care about privacy, but actually they don't.

selling android or breaking it up would be terrible since you just go back to each manufacturer making their own flavor with no updates or compatability.
- It'd be good for Android to be mostly its base, the Android Open Source Project. Over the years Google put more and more things in the proprietary part of Android (Google Play Services) instead of AOSP.
  Depends on who takes over whether that gets better of course. If they also put too much in Play Services, or ask the manufacturers for a high fee, yes it's possible we go back to more oem flavours.
- I used to believe this, before google turned evil. Right now I'd take 5 shitty flavours than the pure shit google is doing. They have turned into a vile corporation that needs to be cut down
- Disagree, you might be right in the short term, but long term competition like that only benefits the customer.

Sell it to who?
- I would laugh if a European company stepped in to buy it. Most used browser in the whole entire world bought by a European company? Would absolutely be hilarious and I'd be so down for that to happen.
  
  Hilarious AND good for humanity? Sign me up!
- Take a guess who’s going to buy it.
  
  Probably Microsoft.

Xoogle and Xdroid run by doge.
- Oh god.. No!
  
  If that happened which would not surprise me with how ridiculous US government has been I'd be open to using Samsung's Tizen over Doge controlled and influenced Xdroid.

So…. What are the odds on fElon ending up owning some of this shit?
- Depends on how low we can sink his Tesla stock.
  It's a team effort, if everyone throws one Molotov we can be done by April.
  
  Wouldn't that just screw over insurance companies?

Google is awful, but any other company that could afford to buy and run Chrome would be worse.
- Microsoft Chrome - now with Cortana!
- Heaven forbid it becomes its own company/a non profit.
  
  Non profit under this US administration who's mantra is what rules? Seems highly optimistic. I see it being more likely that Musk takes the opportunity to try and get the most popular browser and phone OS that is used world wide.
- Any alternative is better than letting monopolies stand.
  
  Sounds a lot like, "Biden & Harris support genocide, so let's vote for Trump."
- Eh, maybe, maybe not. I'm guessing it'll be Microsoft, and they'll just run it into the ground like they do with pretty much everything.

Ok but is this like REAL yet or did they just say they intend to?
- Reading the article helps to answer this question:
  The DOJ is asking the court to force Google to promptly and fully divest itself of Chrome, along with any data or other assets required for its continued operation.
  It also links the filing, see specifically "III. Plaintiffs’ Revised Proposed Final Judgment"
  
  Who reads articles these days?
  Thank you

Good. Now do Amazon.

Looks like Google didn't bend the knee enough.
- They'll bend eventually. Money does that.
  Remember when DeSantis went to war with Disney? And Disney destroyed him and any chance he had to being a presidential candidate and we all cheered? Then Disney went around to make allegiance with all the non-DeSantis Republicans?
  It's all money for stockholders at the end of the day. Not people, not who sits at the throne.
  
  But people are the shareholders.

i really distrust Google and I'm glad about the verdict. I do agree that chrome and android should be ~~cut off models~~.
edit: cut off from advertising business models
on the other hand, like with Firefox, I'm worried about the instability and changes that are coming, mainly in the effect on fork projects Like Graphene, Calyx, Lineage, any privacy-focused Chrome forks, and of course Chromium.
DOJ probably isn't able to guarantee chrome & potentially android are taken over by totally ethical, stable companies/NPOs who will keep the projects open source, or allow an open source offshoot project to which the new organization would still contribute coding people-hours.
I'm sure there will be some sort of guarantees for stock chrome and android users, like paid services/subscriptions will be continued or refunded.
but what about users of community projects based on chrome and Android?
many other Lemmy users have commented how community projects don't really have the resources to keep browser engines up to date, let alone innovate. without Google (which i think is a good thing), Microsoft Edge team could become the de facto direction-setter of Chronium (which i think is really really really bad).
TL;DR the foss mobile OS community, and especially the foss browser community (considering Firefox funding shortfall and AI/ad revenue pursuits) are possibly f*ed in the a for the near term.
- DOJ probably isn't able to guarantee chrome & potentially android are taken over by totally ethical, stable companies/NPOs who will keep the projects open source
  This doesn't seem like their job. This is antitrust, as long as the result isn't monopolistic, that's it, no?
  
  You're right, but the concern is still valid.
  
  it's not their job, i agree. not under the current constitution and laws.
  i meant to highlight that no one is going to guarantee anything (other than Google losing ownership of Chrome/Android).
- Not sure why Google needs to sell chrome but Microsoft doesn't need to sell edge. Noone controlling the device should also own the internet browser imo.
  
  I think the biggest difference is the fact Google owns the majority of the web browser market share, but there's more to the cases than "big company owns big browser," it actually has to do with Google's search engine deals (e.g. with Apple and Mozilla) and Google's ad business stifling the industry.
  
  I only mentioned MS Edge to highlight that it's a chrome(-ium) browser and ~~therefore~~ Edge probably has a paid team of developers.
  That team probably has enough quantity of members (or coding work hours) to overwhelm the upstream chromium code contributions of volunteer developers of foss projects.
  Because of Edge's volume of contributions, they could accidentally/intentionally decide the direction of Chromium, even without owning it officially. That's one of the ways I heard that Google controlled Chromium, accidentally or intentionally.
  edit: wording mistake

If they really wanted to change the character of the company, spin off the ad and cloud businesses into two separate things and let them figure out the rest.

Hell yes! Fuck google!
- You’re happy until you figure out who’s going to buy it when it splits.
  
  ☹️

I mean, I'd love to see Google broken up, but this isn't news. DoJ has been asking specifically for Chrome to be sold for over a year now, and the lawsuit was started during the first Trump administration. Until the judge actually reaches a decision this is just recycled old news.

And this worked so well with Microsoft back in the day. (It didn't)

Interesting. Why focus on selling chrome? I’m not sure I understand the DOJ here. Google could end Chrome and continue updating chromium instead of selling if not for this directive. Given they are approved to continue working on chromium I don’t see why the sale is being forced.
- The monopoly is the problem, someone using a pixel, using android, browsing using chrome, using Google search to find your website, visit an article website where you sign in via Google, see Google ads throughout, click on an affiliate link to buy a featured product of the blog and post using Google pay.
  This is classic monopoly and Google chrome is small dab middle of it, if you want to break a chain you start from breaking it in the middle instead of the end like Google pay. Hopefully other things will follow soon.