4 ms·

It will be really ironic if this kills Mozilla / Firefox

shiroiushi 2y ago
That's one of several scary scenarios. What if it kills Android, and everyone has to buy an iPhone? (Yeah, I know, Android is OSS and the phone makers could just maintain/improve it as a consortium without Google, but looking at how these companies operate I don't think they're capable of doing this.) (And no, I don't think the USG will break up Apple if this happens. They're already showing highly preferential treatment to Apple compared to Google.) What if it kills YouTube, and the only viable alternative is TikTok? I recommend everyone start downloading all their favorite YouTube videos with yt-dlp right away, just in case. What if it kills Google Maps? Again, there's no real viable alternative here unless you have an iPhone. I can see a lot of ways things could go horribly wrong here if you're someone who doesn't want to be an Apple user.
- dehrmann 2y ago
  > And no, I don't think the USG will break up Apple if this happens. They're already showing highly preferential treatment to Apple compared to Google. The largest business by far is iPhones. It has 16% market share in the PC business, behind Lenovo, HP, and Dell. The only business that makes sense to peel off is the iPhone services (Apple Music, News, etc.) because that's the place it uses its dominant position to help its own products.
- busterarm 2y ago
  Samsung could easily maintain Android as they already have their own little Android software ecosystem that differs greatly from Google's. Full of spyware, but yeah. There's tons of video hosting options but what makes YouTube special is access to a large audience and monetization. TikTok's monetization is garbage and not even a contender really. Large content creators are already negotiating their own brand deals to the point where YouTube's ad money is merely the cherry on top. I actually think breaking up YouTube would be good for audiences and in the long run creators themselves. Content creator networks would make a return in a big way. There is already OpenStreetMaps. MapQuest existed before Google Maps and still does.
  - labcomputer 2y ago
    Yea, but OSM has variable quality by country, and isn’t really a “navigable” map in most places. You can’t get turn-by-turn directions because they don’t (consistently) have things like lane permeability, turn restrictions, directionality, etc. You can’t get accurate ETAs because they don’t have speed limits or free flow speeds. And traffic data of course. Unless things have changed, routing class and surface type are also unreliable, so a shortest-path graph algo will take you down neighborhood streets or unmaintained roads. There is a ton of under-the-hood map data, invisible to the end user, that you need to have to be able to deliver a modern phone navigation experience.
    - busterarm 2y ago
      Garmin (and other) GPS devices still exist. They're quite nice these days even. My phone tends to overheat when I stick it under the window to use for directions, so I tend to prefer the dedicated GPS units anyway.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    OpenStreetMaps is utterly useless for urban navigation. No connection to the local transit system, no business directory, it's only useful if you have a physical address you want to go to, and personally I never have that information. MapQuest doesn't have any of this stuff either. Apple Maps is probably the closest, but it falls very far short of what Google Maps can do.
- labcomputer 2y ago
  Google Maps isn’t going anywhere. They are a profit center from all the search ads within the map.
azemetre 2y ago
Mozilla killed Firefox itself with its poor leadership. They have had nearly 20 years of Google writing them half a billion checks annually. If they can't come up with a better business plan than literal corporate welfare, maybe they don't deserve to exist?
asdff 2y ago
I don't understand where all the money goes for mozilla. Here is the revenue line from wikipedia for 2022: total revenue | percent from google | total expenses |software dev expenses $593 million | 81% ($480 million) | $425 million | $220 million so basically 168 million in the bank in 2022. the math has been basically this the last 10 years. in 2018 they lost 1 million but in 2019 they gained 330 million. a lot of their software expenses probably comes from the busywork features they saddled upon themselves like pocket or whatever, since it was only $63 million in 2010 and has only gone up by a couple hundred million from there. So just over the last 10 years from my back of the envelope map from that table on wikipedia, they should have a good 1.5 billion in the war chest by today assuming the mozilla foundation did not make investments with it, which they probably have this entire time so probably even more valuable. At a certain point, maybe already, the org should have enough cash socked away in investment to just pay for operating expenses out of dividends alone.

That's one of several scary scenarios. What if it kills Android, and everyone has to buy an iPhone? (Yeah, I know, Android is OSS and the phone makers could just maintain/improve it as a consortium without Google, but looking at how these companies operate I don't think they're capable of doing this.) (And no, I don't think the USG will break up Apple if this happens. They're already showing highly preferential treatment to Apple compared to Google.) What if it kills YouTube, and the only viable alternative is TikTok? I recommend everyone start downloading all their favorite YouTube videos with yt-dlp right away, just in case. What if it kills Google Maps? Again, there's no real viable alternative here unless you have an iPhone. I can see a lot of ways things could go horribly wrong here if you're someone who doesn't want to be an Apple user.

dehrmann 2y ago
> And no, I don't think the USG will break up Apple if this happens. They're already showing highly preferential treatment to Apple compared to Google. The largest business by far is iPhones. It has 16% market share in the PC business, behind Lenovo, HP, and Dell. The only business that makes sense to peel off is the iPhone services (Apple Music, News, etc.) because that's the place it uses its dominant position to help its own products.
busterarm 2y ago
Samsung could easily maintain Android as they already have their own little Android software ecosystem that differs greatly from Google's. Full of spyware, but yeah. There's tons of video hosting options but what makes YouTube special is access to a large audience and monetization. TikTok's monetization is garbage and not even a contender really. Large content creators are already negotiating their own brand deals to the point where YouTube's ad money is merely the cherry on top. I actually think breaking up YouTube would be good for audiences and in the long run creators themselves. Content creator networks would make a return in a big way. There is already OpenStreetMaps. MapQuest existed before Google Maps and still does.
- labcomputer 2y ago
  Yea, but OSM has variable quality by country, and isn’t really a “navigable” map in most places. You can’t get turn-by-turn directions because they don’t (consistently) have things like lane permeability, turn restrictions, directionality, etc. You can’t get accurate ETAs because they don’t have speed limits or free flow speeds. And traffic data of course. Unless things have changed, routing class and surface type are also unreliable, so a shortest-path graph algo will take you down neighborhood streets or unmaintained roads. There is a ton of under-the-hood map data, invisible to the end user, that you need to have to be able to deliver a modern phone navigation experience.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    Garmin (and other) GPS devices still exist. They're quite nice these days even. My phone tends to overheat when I stick it under the window to use for directions, so I tend to prefer the dedicated GPS units anyway.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  OpenStreetMaps is utterly useless for urban navigation. No connection to the local transit system, no business directory, it's only useful if you have a physical address you want to go to, and personally I never have that information. MapQuest doesn't have any of this stuff either. Apple Maps is probably the closest, but it falls very far short of what Google Maps can do.
labcomputer 2y ago
Google Maps isn’t going anywhere. They are a profit center from all the search ads within the map.

azemetre 2y ago

Mozilla killed Firefox itself with its poor leadership. They have had nearly 20 years of Google writing them half a billion checks annually. If they can't come up with a better business plan than literal corporate welfare, maybe they don't deserve to exist?

asdff 2y ago

I don't understand where all the money goes for mozilla. Here is the revenue line from wikipedia for 2022: total revenue | percent from google | total expenses |software dev expenses $593 million | 81% ($480 million) | $425 million | $220 million so basically 168 million in the bank in 2022. the math has been basically this the last 10 years. in 2018 they lost 1 million but in 2019 they gained 330 million. a lot of their software expenses probably comes from the busywork features they saddled upon themselves like pocket or whatever, since it was only $63 million in 2010 and has only gone up by a couple hundred million from there. So just over the last 10 years from my back of the envelope map from that table on wikipedia, they should have a good 1.5 billion in the war chest by today assuming the mozilla foundation did not make investments with it, which they probably have this entire time so probably even more valuable. At a certain point, maybe already, the org should have enough cash socked away in investment to just pay for operating expenses out of dividends alone.