Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine. The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences

Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine. The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences are three-fold: - Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for placement - There can be no central directives to shove things like Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats - Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge in its web offerings In other words, if a business is split, the same economics work, but without all the shady, anti-trusty stuff. It's an independent company, without linked chains of corporate control. I think it most serves Google's interests to set up a second nonprofit similar to Mozilla to manage this, perhaps with more of a consortium model. Whatever Google can sell Chrome for is less in its interests than maintaining that the new Chrome will not be used against Google the way Google used Chrome against competitors.... If DDG were to end up with ownership of Chrome and switch from Google Search to DDG, I think Google would be pretty unhappy, while DDG's market cap of 75M versus Google's of $2T -- 2000 times higher -- would even out a little bit. One of the key points is that the EXACT SAME economics and business model can be evil and anti-trusty or good and fair depending on chains of control and collusion. If there is a colluding consortium (whether by backroom deals or by having related products in the same place), new competitors won't come in since they know they'll be crushed unfairly. Same economics without backroom deals, and you've got market competition.