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DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]
- gnabgib 2y agoDiscussion (1171 points, 2 days ago, 1387 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42177767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42177767
- voidfunc 2y agoThis will quietly die off after Jan 20. Nothing to see here.
- Onavo 2y agoThey need to pay their tithe/donation to the administration first.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoTrump is a lame duck. Donating to his campaign is useless. They have one path for political redemption, and it’s to acquire Trump annd his allies’ companies and/or invest in their funds.
- CalRobert 2y agoHow is he a lame duck?
- wmf 2y agoTechnically he can't run again so he doesn't need any money for his own campaign. However, he might reward donations to his friends in the MAGA Cinematic Universe.
- labster 2y agoI’m sure the constitution will be changed to allow Trump to remain President, one way or the other way.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoAlmost certainly not. If he runs it will be by ignoring the Constitution, and at that point we’re legitimately in civil war territory.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rvz 2y agoExactly. He is not going to and he will not. By the next election and after his second term ends, we'll see that all the extremely wild claims of: "Trump is ending the constitution!" "This will be the last election if Trump wins!" "Trump will be a dictator!" "Civil war is going to happen under Trump!" All of this repeated ad-nauseam, will be forgotten and dismissed as complete hysterical nonsense.
- mcphage 2y ago> If he runs it will be by ignoring the Constitution He's already done that—section 3 of the 14th amendment should have prohibited him from becoming president. It went to the Supreme Court, and they decided they didn't care. If the 14th amendment could be ignored, why not the 22nd?
- defrost 2y agoThe US constitution would allow him to "run" ( usually it's coast ) as Vice President to the next POTUS .. and that would also allow him one day less than two years as POTUS should the VP be required to take over for the sitting President. Realistically Trump most likely lacks any interest once his various and sundry pending felony and other charges have been quashed or voided by immunity grants, etc.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoI wonder if a big enough ad spend at X would be enough.
- Hilift 2y agoYep. Even if there were a case, it would be litigated in the courts for years.
- asadotzler 2y agoThe case is over. Are you even paying attention? They were found guilty. This is "sentencing" basically, the penalty phase.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoNot necessarily. The state of Colorado is one of the plaintiffs.
- comex 2y agoTo ask the judge to force Google to spin off Chrome. The judge still has to agree to it.
- anon291 2y agoAs usual DOJ is late to the party. Google is already facing competition and as it falters, the doj will use this as 'evidence' it was effective.
- Teever 2y agoThe way you write this implies that it is somehow an intrinsic fault of the DoJ and not the fault of monopolists like Google with the massive resources to slow walk these kinds of things, or the effective lobbying of the Obama administration followed by four chaotic years of Trump. Never forget that corruption is always to blame for these failures, not the noble people who try and fix these things with flawed institutions.
- anon291 2y ago> Never forget that corruption is always to blame for these failures, not the noble people who try and fix these things with flawed institutions. This is dogmatism. You're implying that those working for the government are inherently more noble than the rest, and that only private enterprise is flawed. To the contrary, I am implying nothing, just pointing out that the DOJ is late to the game. This would have meant something a decade ago when Google absolutely dominated. But they're being nipped at by a thousand different companies right now.
- JSteph22 2y agoIt's fair to criticize the DoJ if they're enforcing anti-trust laws in a poor manner.
- iam-role-admin 2y agoI wonder what’s going to happen to ChromeOS
- wmf 2y agoIf ChromeOS and Android end up in different companies it might prevent them from merging and thus lead to greater OS diversity.
- knuckleheads 2y agoPage 12 is also very interesting to me personally, as it contains orders mandating the opening of Google’s search index to their competitors. I had been wondering if that would make it in there and am happy to see it land.
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- 43920 2y agoThis has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're essentially a loss-generating product, that exist because they cancel out distribution costs that Google and Microsoft would otherwise have to pay other browsers. But the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers: > As detailed in Section IV, the PFJ prohibits Google from providing third parties something of value (including financial payments) in order to make Google the default general search engine or otherwise discouraging those third parties from offering competing search products With that revenue gone, the only real options to fund a browser are: * Directly charge users for it. This is effectively a non-starter, because the vast majority of people aren't willing to pay for it. * Insert ads or sell user data - users also hate this, it's probably not legal in the EU, and it may not be legal in most of the US in the future either. * Use the browser as a platform to push some product that does make money - a non-Google search engine? A social network? An LLM interface? Alternatively, a narrow reading of the proposed order is that this only applies to Google. In that case, perhaps Bing or OpenAI takes over all the distribution agreements and becomes the top search engine. Whether that's better for consumers seems fairly questionable.
- wbl 2y agoDisplay ad insertion would be legal and there are definitely ways to do it all client side.
- wmf 2y agoJust like scraping the entire Web for AI training is totally fair use? Enjoy ten years of lawsuits to prove it. Web sites would never tolerate ads being inserted that don't pay them.
- reissbaker 2y agoUnfortunately the real answer is: * Only operating system vendors can ship web browsers. (But not Google.) The USG in general seems to love giving Apple more monopoly power. This will effectively constrain browser development to just Apple and Microsoft, since as you note, the DOJ is also trying to regulate Firefox out of existence; and Apple has huge incentives to simply pause browser feature development (and has been dragging its feet on Safari for years). Incredibly, this will also hamstring Android even further, since its parent company can't even make a web browser for it anymore! Only Apple, the Biden administration's favorite company, can do that kind of thing.
- xnx 2y agoGoogle's response: "DOJ’s staggering proposal would hurt consumers and America’s global technological leadership" https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/doj-search-remedies-nov-2024/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/doj-s...
- dyauspitr 2y agoI wholeheartedly agree. What the hell is the DOJ thinking?
- k4rli 2y agoWould've been believable before the MV3 adblock ban fiasco. Now it's clear this browser doesn't care about the users.
- JSteph22 2y agoI agree. The DOJ should stick to imposing fines or enforcing rules on things like bundling or pricing. Not arbitrarily breaking companies up where there's no clear business model.
- viraptor 2y agoOf course these are things they'll say publicly. And they'll point out all the bad results and none of the good ones. None of what they wrote should be surprising, but also it's not particularly novel/interesting. (Also they're framing a few good things as if they're bad for the users...)
- m4r1k 2y agoChrome is not the problem. Chrome is not even a symptom. The problem is that the world's largest search engine is also the world's largest ad distributor. Chopping off tentacles like Android or Chrome does nothing to slay the two-headed beast.
- wmf 2y agoThere's a bunch of other stuff in there about syndicating data (which admittedly I don't understand) that takes aim at the heart of search and ads.
- forgotoldacc 2y agoIt's all part of an ecosystem. Chrome is a vehicle in which users are roped into their search engine and ads. And their search engine and ads also push users into Chrome. It's all cyclical. Breaking off any chunk weakens the link between them and locks users into their ecosystem less. Rome wasn't built in a day, and monopolies aren't destroyed in one either.
- dismalaf 2y agoApple's VP literally said that no amount of money would make them choose Bing over Google because Google is the best search engine... Lets be real, no one needs to be "roped into" using Google search. People have Bing and Edge shoved down their throats and still use Chrome and Google...
- forgotoldacc 2y agoA company that operates a monopoly having massive advantages against competitors isn't the argument you think it is. Courts in every developed country on earth see your statement and say "That's precisely why we're breaking this company up." Every single time a monopoly forms, people say "It's not a monopoly. They're just better than the others and nobody wants the competition." They never realize that's the textbook example of a monopoly.
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- algobro 2y agoWeird that a Biden DOJ would do this. Here's a bet: they are offloading a legal liability. Within 12 months someone reverse engineers the binaries and show that they were siphoning out all keystroke data, or it has an official remote backdoor or something equally horrendous.
- mupuff1234 2y agoThe solution should just be to force browsers to support profile migration from one browser to another. And generally, they should just pass laws that enforce interoperability in the software world, from OS to social networks, users should always be allowed to easily migrate.
- JSteph22 2y agoTotally agree. The government has so many tools for enforcement it's puzzling why they insist on arbitrarily breaking up and creating new companies as if they're capable of determining what business models will work or not.
- rjchint 2y agoA much better split would be: Chrome + Display Ads Android + Playstore + App Ads
- dismalaf 2y agoIMO the best split would be: - All Google consumer devices and products (Pixel, Chrome, Android, Nest) - Search - Ads - YouTube Search, Ads and YouTube could all survive and prosper on their own and then the Google devices company can pursue a similar strategy to Apple, have devices pay for software.
- infotainment 2y agoHow could search survive without ads? Charge users per search?
- xboxnolifes 2y agoSearch could still serve ads. It would just have to integrate with Google Ads in the same way a non-Google user would.
- dismalaf 2y agoSell ads to the highest bidder which could be the other entity or someone else.
- hambes 2y agoI'm quite weirded out about the part about sharing google's data with other companies to allow competition. Yes, sharing my data allows other companies to advertise to me and to monetize my interests. No, I don't want that. I don't even want google to do that.
- Trompair 2y agoPersonally I'd rather just see users given a choice. Ban the ability to pay to be the default search engine, and throw up a search engine selection screen when a user first launches the browser. If people still choose to use Google then so be it.
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- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoThere appears to be a hyperfocus on only a single element of the requested remedy. Perhaps many HN commenters are "web developers" and this explains the fixation on popular web browsers. Perhaps commenters should consider that this particular request regarding Chrome may be removed when the revised Proposed Final Judgment is filed in March or this particular request regarding Chrome may be denied by the Court. More often than not, the unbounded speculation put forth by HN commenters is incorrect in predicting the future. IMHO, it would be great if web browsers became simpler to write and more numerous as opposed to the status quo where people commenting online assert that writing a web browser takes enormous investment and accept that there are only a handful to choose from, and these must be all controlled by commercial entities seeking to sell advertising services or partner with such commercial entities. Browsers do not need to be Trojan Horse software to enable surreptitious data collection, nor vectors through which unsolicited advertising may be served. I am typing this comment with one that satisfies neither of those "requirements".
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoTo be fair, it is only just HN comments that are fixating on the request regarding Chrome while ignoring all the other requests.