5 ms·

Depends on how you slice it. Without Googles ad money, Firefox will probably die. Without Googles ad money, so will Chrome - and then consumers are left with w

Depends on how you slice it. Without Googles ad money, Firefox will probably die. Without Googles ad money, so will Chrome - and then consumers are left with what exactly? Safari for those on Apple devices, sure, but thats about it. If Android is made to stand up on its own, can it? And even if it does, is it competitive with iOS? And for how long? If each major manufactor ends up forking it, even that is a net loss for consumers. You can split up ma bell, large airlines, and Standard Oil. But a modern high tech business? That is a lot harder.

cbsks 2y ago
> Without Googles ad money, Firefox will probably die. Correction: Mozilla will probably die. Firefox, or a fork of it, will undoubtedly live on.
- tomjen3 2y ago
  In what form?
  - bitwize 2y ago
    Something with a name like Iceweasel
    - dyauspitr 2y ago
      “Open source and maintained by volunteers”
    - Ferret7446 2y ago
      How much development does Iceweasel do? Changing a logo doesn't actually help sustain a browser long term; they were effectively "leaching" off of Firefox development and by extension Google ad money.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
  I wish I could speed up that death with a letter to the court.
fragmede 2y ago
The Ma Bell breakup was anything but. Splitting the county into regions and the regions don't compete with each other? That's just creating separate regional monopolies. They didn't break up Microsoft after their trial.
weikju 2y ago
> Without Googles ad money, so will Chrome - and then consumers are left with what exactly? With any hope: probably some browsers that care about users rather than consumers
Melatonic 2y ago
Would breaking Google into smaller parts really cause these things to suddenly have no income ? Seems unlikely. The smaller "Googles" would still be huge companies no ?
- ywvcbk 2y ago
  > The smaller "Googles" would still be huge companies no ? Or they would be worthless if they are not self sufficient and are only there to funnel users to Google’s profitable products (Ads). Even something like GCP would struggle, and they aren’t necessarily doing that great compared to competition already. Android or Chrome on the other hand? They have no direct revenue and wouldn’t have existed in the first place if Google wasn’t allowed to do stuff like this from the beginning.
ywvcbk 2y ago
> Safari for those on Apple devices, sure, but thats about it Webkit is open-source though. Wrapping a browser around it is not too hard (that’s how Chrome started after all). So it might not be a horrible situation. Just like Google now they’b be subsidizing the cost of development to a significant extent which would result in much lower entry barriers without having a meaningful direct presence in the market themselves (outside of iOS/Mac). I think same applies for Chromium. It wouldn’t just disappear and MS and other companies would probably pick up the slack to some extent.

cbsks 2y ago

> Without Googles ad money, Firefox will probably die. Correction: Mozilla will probably die. Firefox, or a fork of it, will undoubtedly live on.

tomjen3 2y ago
In what form?
- bitwize 2y ago
  Something with a name like Iceweasel
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    “Open source and maintained by volunteers”
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    How much development does Iceweasel do? Changing a logo doesn't actually help sustain a browser long term; they were effectively "leaching" off of Firefox development and by extension Google ad money.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
I wish I could speed up that death with a letter to the court.

fragmede 2y ago

The Ma Bell breakup was anything but. Splitting the county into regions and the regions don't compete with each other? That's just creating separate regional monopolies. They didn't break up Microsoft after their trial.

weikju 2y ago

> Without Googles ad money, so will Chrome - and then consumers are left with what exactly? With any hope: probably some browsers that care about users rather than consumers

Melatonic 2y ago

Would breaking Google into smaller parts really cause these things to suddenly have no income ? Seems unlikely. The smaller "Googles" would still be huge companies no ?

ywvcbk 2y ago
> The smaller "Googles" would still be huge companies no ? Or they would be worthless if they are not self sufficient and are only there to funnel users to Google’s profitable products (Ads). Even something like GCP would struggle, and they aren’t necessarily doing that great compared to competition already. Android or Chrome on the other hand? They have no direct revenue and wouldn’t have existed in the first place if Google wasn’t allowed to do stuff like this from the beginning.

ywvcbk 2y ago

> Safari for those on Apple devices, sure, but thats about it Webkit is open-source though. Wrapping a browser around it is not too hard (that’s how Chrome started after all). So it might not be a horrible situation. Just like Google now they’b be subsidizing the cost of development to a significant extent which would result in much lower entry barriers without having a meaningful direct presence in the market themselves (outside of iOS/Mac). I think same applies for Chromium. It wouldn’t just disappear and MS and other companies would probably pick up the slack to some extent.