8 ms·

OpenAI wants to buy Chrome and make it an "AI-first" experience

150 points by pseudolus 2y ago

traskjd 2y ago
About 17 years too late to be AI-first.
Communitivity 2y ago
MMW: This will be the death of Chrome. I also do not see Google parting with something so critical to their advertising. With their own browser they control the full length of the wire between the ad-server and the user. Without it, they don't. Only way I could see this happening is if Google then released what they considered a better browser.
- close04 2y ago
  > I also do not see Google parting with something so critical to their advertising. This is not really their choice at this point. They were already found to have abused their position so it's up to a judge to decide what Google has to to next. Google doesn't need "a browser", they need a tool that allows them to exercise more control and this whole court case is about preventing that. OpenAI is just looking for new ways to funnel data into the training of their models. And I'm afraid so many people would eat it up as long as OpenAI gives them some AI candy in return.
- whataguy1997 2y ago
  [dead]
- VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  > I also do not see Google parting with something so critical to their advertising. With their own browser they control the full length of the wire between the ad-server and the user. Without it, they don't. They've already been convicted of anti-trust behavior for precisely this reason. Now the trial is in the remedy phase where the DOJ is asking that they be forced to divest ownership of Chrome and other properties. Google will have no choice in the matter. It's entirely up to the judge at this point.
  - ensignavenger 2y ago
    Up to 'the' judge', plus the many other appellate judges, unless DoJ and Google come to an agreement and Google decides not to appeal. Google can both appeal the original verdict and any remedies.
majormjr 2y ago
Why not fork it like Microsoft did with Edge?
- tokai 2y ago
  Cause the value is in the users. The actual browser is close to worthless.
  - orbital-decay 2y ago
    Chrome/Chromium's value is in the development momentum. You can pile up features, manipulate the entire web, and make it impossible to compete for others. This is what they're trying to buy. A fork isn't enough - there's a huge difference between a technical fork and a meaningful fork.
    - tokai 2y ago
      That's a strength of Chrome for Google. OpenAI would not enjoy the same benefits as they don't control the whole vertical. They want the 4 billion strong spyware botnet that is Chrome.
    - claudex 2y ago
      You have to control a meaningful part of the web (like the Google ecosystem) for that to work.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Tepix 2y ago
  Microsoft Edge is relying on Chromium being contiously developed by Google, isn't it? Not a hard fork that no longer receives updates from upstream.
VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
I don't even use chrome and this sounds miserable. I had to run it for something the other day and immediately got nagged to remove uBlock Origin because they automatically disabled it. And I'm just thinking.. I will never, ever use this browser for anything other than light dev work if I really needed to.
- socalgal2 2y ago
  Using ublock origin lite, haven't noticed a difference. It still blocks all the ads including google's and youtube.
criddell 2y ago
I think it could be interesting to see Chrome sold to ten or more different entities. Allow none of them to use the Chrome name. The last thing Google can do with Chrome is have it randomly select one of the new variations for updates.
- paxys 2y ago
  Let's give Chrome to a million different entities, for free. None of them can use the name. We can remove all the Google add-ons as well. Call it something like... Chromium?
- stogot 2y ago
  How would this even work in practice? Hundreds of million installs out there already use Chrome. How do they get updates (from servers) and which browser does it upgrade to?
  - criddell 2y ago
    The DOJ / FTC / W3C / SEC / whomever vets all of the entities purchasing a share of the Chrome userbase. Part of the purchase agreement would be to have the update and development infrastructure in place and commit to updating their version of the browser and making good faith efforts to adhere to W3C standards for the next 3 years. Once the sale details are finalized, Google pushes out a final update that changes where the next update to Chrome would come from (and it would be a random selection from the list of buyers).
mkl 2y ago
Make default search be a version of ChatGPT and put ads on it? Could work (I wouldn't use it though). The way a lot of people use their browser they might be fine with it if it puts navigation-type links up top (I have literally seen a technical colleague with a PhD do a Google search for "x" and click a link rather than type the ".com"). The inference costs would surely make it hard to profit from though. Having just closed a $40 billion USD funding round [1], OpenAI might actually be able to afford a fair price for Chrome (supposedly $15-20 billion USD [2]). [1] There are some catches to that: https://www.investopedia.com/openai-closes-up-to-usd40b-funding-round-valuing-chatgpt-maker-at-usd300b-11706662 https://www.investopedia.com/openai-closes-up-to-usd40b-fund... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chrome+sale+valuation https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chrome+sale+valuation
- usrusr 2y ago
  Ads? Customers would not pay for ads, they would pay for getting convenient "truths" emphasized in the training material, and inconvenient ones deemphasized. Imagine Wikipedia with pay-to-edit.
  - rchaud 2y ago
    That's the beauty of ads. Customers don't pay, the advertisers do.
    - usrusr 2y ago
      Customers are whoever is paying. Non-paying users are not customers, they are the resource to be sold.
- vbezhenar 2y ago
  If I'm typing website name, I'm always using Google to ensure that I won't mistype it and won't land on malware domain. Google always corrects me and will make sure that search results are safe.
  - neuroticnews25 2y ago
drdrek 2y ago
You can ignore it, this is just a page taken from the Musk school of attention farming.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  It actually kind of makes sense. The DOJ wants to break what it considers to be Google's monopoly, and Chrome is a prime target. The problem is that Chrome by itself is worse than worthless, it is a money sink and it only makes sense as a part of a system. OpenAI is starting to feel the competition. ChatGPT is no longer the only game in town, DeepSeek happened, Google is becoming actually good, Claude is quite popular among coders, and Grok is not a joke anymore. They need something if they don't want to lose out, and buying the most popular browser to make it into a gateway into their service may be an option.
  - Alifatisk 2y ago
    > Google is becoming good Where?
    - fscaramuzza 2y ago
      New Gemini models are quite good, Gemini 2.5 Pro is 1st in the user-benchmarks [1]. They also have Gemma, very good model that can run locally [2]. Benchmarks are not oracles of truth, but I feel like Google is not a kid who arrived late at the party anymore. [1] https://lmarena.ai/ https://lmarena.ai/ [2] https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-3/ https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-3/
      - danielbln 2y ago
        Yeah, with Gemini 2.5 Google stepped up to the grown up AI table and added on top. I still have a soft spot for Claude for general purpose chats, but have fully switched to Gemini for dev.
      - nisegami 2y ago
        Considering that several key breakthroughs happened at Google that made GPT-style LLMs possible (e.g. Attention is all you need paper), it's more like they took a long smoke break than showed up late.
Tepix 2y ago
Google is likely to have 1000 people or so working on Chrome and Chromium. That's going to be difficult to maintain. If OpenAI takes over i expect Chrome and Chromium to go closed source.
- socalgal2 2y ago
  [flagged]
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  Chromium would be hard to relicense due to copyright but trivial to fork. So, chromium won't go away. Those 1000+ people are the main resource here. Effectively they work mostly on chromium and not on chrome. What happens to chromium if that stops? My guess is MS might step up and hire people.
  - ArinaS 2y ago
    > "So, chromium won't go away." Sadly, it absolutely can go closed-source as it's licensed under BSD-3 clause, which is not a copyleft license.
    - dabockster 2y ago
      I think the old versions would still be OSS (or "source available" at the very least) and could be used in some way in other products.
      - jillesvangurp 2y ago
        The old version would stay licensed exactly as it is. You can't retroactively change a license. Technically any form of re-licensing the original implies some kind of fork happens. The old system continues to exist for anyone that has a copy. The license allows anyone to fork of course. So anyone with a copy could just pretend that's the main fork. Chromium is actually a complicated project. Some of the project coordination is actually taken care of by the Linux Foundation; not by Google. But Google of course controls and hosts the key code repositories. However, they don't own the code base exclusively though because they have been accepting contributions from e.g. Microsoft and the many other companies that base their browser on Chromium. And of course individual developers. Copyright stays with those. The partial permissive licensing (it's a mixed license code base) makes it possible to incorporate the code in a closed source system. But some of the components are LGPL, which still would require publishing the code of those components. And of course Chrome is an example of such a system and Chromium is the way they publish the source code. And Edge. And Brave. Etc. Chromium is the shared source code base for those. But it doesn't allow Google (or anyone) to take away the copyright from contributors. That would require a copyright transfer agreement. And no such thing exists for Chromium. So, Chromium is unlikely to stop existing. And if it somehow does, it would immediately trigger a fork with a different name created by all the stakeholders that would require such a thing. The only question is who ends up employing the Google employees that currently provide most of the code contributions and who owns the Chromium trademark (Google currently). IMHO that's an unhealthy situation that should be resolved in any case. And with multiple wealthy companies using chromium, funding that should be no issue.
santiagobasulto 2y ago
This sounds a bit clickbaity, they could just fork Chromium and build their own version as Edge or Brave. After all, they already have the distribution (ChatGPT).
- gaiagraphia 2y ago
  Surely they'd be wanting to buy 3.5billion users, though? I actually wonder what the price tag is for that, lol.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    That's it, if Chrome goes independent and / or is opened up for purchase, it's a very attractive target for companies for data harvesting. I mean I'm sure Google does as well (and got in trouble for e.g. incognito mode not being as incognito as advertised), but they keep it under wraps and make sure to not scare people off.
- podgietaru 2y ago
  If they get chrome they can push updates to the already existing user base. They’d be buying the user base.
  - seydor 2y ago
    but my main reason for using chrome is my google account
    - nfRfqX5n 2y ago
      Is there any talk about how google account integration would change if they were forced to sell?
    - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
      I guess most people use chrome because it is the default. Some people think I don't have internet because I don't have a chrome icon.
sidcool 2y ago
Isn't it easier to buy Brave or Opera?
- qwertox 2y ago
  Please let it be Opera, I'd never consider using it anyway.
  - flakiness 2y ago
    Opera is owened by a Chinese entity today. Buying it can be much harder in today's environment. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/dealbook/china-opera-kunlun-qihoo-golden-brick.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/dealbook/china-o...
- constantcrying 2y ago
  It would be even easier to make a minimum effort fork of chromium. What would be the point though?
schnable 2y ago
I wonder if OpenAI would monetize the browser primarily by collecting user data and advertising, or by pushing ChatGPT subscriptions.
- gaiagraphia 2y ago
  I guess they could effectively copy Kagi's model at mammoth scale - offering a premium internet browsing experience with a 'personalised assistant'. Easy to convince at least 10% of the users to sign in to their browser with a verified credit card to 'protect the children', and governments around the world would give you full support. At that point, would be trivial for them to track browsing habits, and then to start offering personalised assistants which save you time and eventually cost money. Pretty sure you could save money throuh having a huge botnet of computers to tap into, and a huge amount of data to help cache and standardise common requests.
seydor 2y ago
didnt they consume the entire web to make their models? Buying chrome is an anachronism, like google buying godaddy. ah nevermind, it's just billionaire pissing contest
- gaiagraphia 2y ago
  They've consumed yesterday's web. Why not get the user to pay the energy and processing bill for subsequent rounds? Being able to track the habits of 3.5 billion users at source is probably quite useful, too.
  - tgfrr 2y ago
    Imagine using the largest browser user base as an unlockable botnet for scraping, built right into their browser itself.
- motoxpro 2y ago
  I think you're missing what makes consumer companies valuable. It's all about distribution. They get way more data (usage, browsing, etc.), they get 3.5 billion users (this is the main thing) and they get to be the interface for all those people onto the web. I just don't think they can afford it.
bilsbie 2y ago
Is anyone working on an Ai first phone? I think at the least I should be able to have Ai interact with anything on my screen. And beyond that it could even code interfaces on the fly depending on the task.
- berkes 2y ago
  Chrome is installed on (almost?) every Android phone. So they'd be buying much more than this. Not a new "AI phone", which has to gain traction, find users, convince people to switch, compete in highly competitive (hardware( and duopolized (OS, Software) landscape. I won't be suprised if amongst Android users, Chrome is one of the most installed apps - if only because many phones have it locked (i.e. its really hard or impossible to remove). Maybe "Google Assistant" is installed more than chrome, IDK. But Chrome has the additional benefit that it is also installed on many iPhones. Sou Chrome would be a gateway into "making your iPhone an AI phone" too.
- dmd 2y ago
  It almost sounds as if you believe this would be a good thing.
- ivape 2y ago
  It kind of shows the state of Indie development over the last 2 decades that it's only the big players that can move mountains. Linux on the phone never happened, and it seems like we are all resigned to the fact that the future AI phone OS/AI browser will be made by the titans and not anyone else. Even if it came out of the open-source scene the titans just buy the damn thing.
- hennell 2y ago
  I have the latest S25 (regular not the oversized +) and it does a lot of AI first like things. It can see what's on the screen, summarize your day, circle to search etc. I disabled most of it within a few days because it mostly gets in the way of normal basic things like taking screenshots or just reading my actual notifications in full. The picture editing can be nice, but realistically there's just no need for most of its 'support', it's just clippy on your phone getting in the way.
- 2y ago
ivape 2y ago
I don't know what's going on here but it sounds like "Hey, I want to take your wife and have sex with her". Gotta read between the lines here. I think Google has a 14% stake in Anthropic. Along with Gemini, Chrome and Android as delivery vehicles, and search. The monopoly lawsuit is about this (the advertising ship sailed long ago, so what's this really about), and there's some nasty legal talk going on here. I think if they just give up the Anthropic stake and promise to allow any AI provider in chrome, then this nonsense will all end. /tinfoil
mcherm 2y ago
I am a big fan of having deep-pocketed corporations pay huge amounts of money to pay for open source products. I suppose this fits into that category.
- diego_moita 2y ago
  > deep-pocketed corporations pay huge amounts of money to pay for open source products. There are many names for this: co-opt, assimilate, bribing ... A lot of times it is like when Tony Soprano offers you a deal, or like when the U.S. made the NAFTA deal with Canada and Mexico. It feels good and awesome at the beginning but later on, when you become dependent on it, you'll have to pay an heavy price.
- rchaud 2y ago
  This is a transaction between 2 giant corporations. What is there to be a fan of? Chrome is not open-source, Chromium is.
jimmySixDOF 2y ago
Rony Abovitz, the founding energy behind Magic Leap, does this 'AI/XR Podcast' and last episode they discussed OpenAI rumors about a Social Network. As a founder himself who lived through being flavor of the day getting showered with venture money his observation was prescient: this 'I can do anything' approach is what happens to a certain kind of person (who will "eat everything on the table" is how he phrased it) given all checks and no balances. He contrasted that with someone like Jenson who pulled Nvidia off of a cliff more than once and so has the scartissue to limit his reach to keep focus on core business.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  > given all checks and no balances. Do you mean no checks and balances? A check is a restriction or constraint.
  - wepple 2y ago
    I suspect this may be a play on words where checks = cheque, or money
    - pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
      "Balance" also has a financial meaning…
      - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
        I am stating the obvious to clarify: cheques without balances is an overdraft. You give a piece of paper that can't be exchanged for money when promised.
        lostlogin 2y ago
        I don’t think that the saying has anything to do with money. It’s about power, oversight and preventing overreach. Of course, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t used in reference to money by the OP.
Moosdijk 2y ago
With which money, Sam?
- blitzar 2y ago
  Someone elses.
- preommr 2y ago
  Just shave off a few billion from that 7 trillion dollar plan. What's the big deal?
ratatoskrt 2y ago
I see a great future for Firefox.
- insin 2y ago
  Chrome: unilaterally disables uBlock Origin Mozilla response: mess around with Firefox's privacy notice in such a way that it generates _negative_ press Potential future Chrome: gets bought by OpenAI Estimated future Mozilla response: "every time a user installs Firefox, a healthy tree is chopped down, the wood is used to create bats with the user's name engraved on them, and the bats are used to hit endangered animals"
  - stogot 2y ago
    I love Firefox but Mozilla seems determined to self-sabotage itself. it is painful to watch
- ArinaS 2y ago
  Mozilla will quite literally die if the demands of the judge get satisfied - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/mozilla-ceo-on-google-antitrust/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/mozilla-.... So I guess the last resort for people who don't want to surrender to the Big Tech will be niche hard forks of Firefox, of which there are 3 - Pale Moon, Basilisk and SeaMonkey.
busssard 2y ago
why do the not just make their own GPT browser?
nashashmi 2y ago
Honestly, Google should sell Search to OpenAI. And keep Chrome and the rest of Google. It will be contrary to what the DOJ intended. But it makes sense for Google and Open AI. By making search an AI first experience, both behemoths will signal the new dawn of AI is here. Google’s greatest advantage is the use of AI in drive and docs and presentation and excel and cloud services.
- NegativeK 2y ago
  AI search results (not just Google's) are so frequently incorrect that this would be disastrous.
  - rchaud 2y ago
    Impaired assets are still assets, although it would be funny to see what fair market value would be for a busted search engine.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > Google should sell Search to OpenAI OpenAI can't afford to buy Search.
blitzar 2y ago
Buy stadium naming rights and we can call the high point for OpenAi.
Havoc 2y ago
ugh. Would much prefer they do something separate. The Chrome & derivatives mono-culture is going to become a problem down the line.
ksec 2y ago
So if Google sold off "Chrome" to OpenAI for billions. Now that OpenAI can push whatever update or search to Chrome as default. Assuming they have use of it. What would stop Google to build another browser say Information Explorer with the same engine and code? And market the hell out of it on its Web property?
- hbrav 2y ago
  > with the same engine and code Presumably they would be selling the IP rights, so at least some kind of rewrite would be required, possibly without utilizing staff who worked on Chrome.
  - ksec 2y ago
    The Code is open source, they just get someone to package the browser into something different. Just like how M$ is doing with Edge? It would be funny though if they hire different people to build another browser on top of webkit again XD.
    - mirekrusin 2y ago
      ...in rust, right? what an opportunity.
- arealaccount 2y ago
  Possibly a non compete?
- VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  > What would stop Google to build another browser say Information Explorer with the same engine and code? The courts. The courts would stop them. The entire premise for Google selling-off Chrome is a mandate that they divest themselves from the business itself.
- echoangle 2y ago
  > What would stop Google to build another browser say Information Explorer with the same engine and code? And market the hell out of it on its Web property? Probably a court order, no? If you’re ordered to sell something, can you just recreate it immediately?
p0nce 2y ago
Well that would be a good way to kill off Chrome and get out of the mono-browser culture.
awei 2y ago
It is interesting how the data rush is changing, it was about Ads targeting, now it is about training AI. I wonder if one is better than the other for the open-source community? Would Chrome be more free or more locked-in with OpenAi
- troupo 2y ago
  > it was about Ads targeting, now it is about training AI. It's the same data rush. Don't fr a second think that "AI" will be used for anything but ads and selling your data t the highest bidder
jgalt212 2y ago
I guess OpenAI found a use for Masa's $40B.
iambateman 2y ago
This is the problem with breaking Chrome out of Google. It’s not just OpenAI, but the constellation of potential buyers is short and problematic. Is Apple a good buyer? Oracle? OpenAI? NVIDIA? The Saudis? (I think I’m kidding about that?) Someone is going to buy this for $100B and find a way to make a (big) profit off of it. I’m not sure the new landlord is going to be less rapacious than the last one was.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Similar to the current antitrust case with Meta. The time to have tackled these problems was probably about a decade ago.
  - louthy 2y ago
    > Damned if you do, damned if you don't Only if you wait a few decades to break a monopoly up. This is the fall out of the lack of US government intervention in their megatech companies. We see the EU trying to fight back, but really all of this is far too late. There will be significant fall out, I’m sure. The sale of Chrome could be an unmitigated disaster.
    - crowcroft 2y ago
      Totally agree. I think the only option here would be separating the company into multiple companies. This seems to be the direction the Meta case is more likely to go in. Eg. Google could become, Google Search (and AI), YouTube, and an independent ad tech company with the remnants of DoubleClick (maybe Google Ads moves into this group as well and has deals with the other two entities).
- tananaev 2y ago
  If someone else buys Chrome, hopefully Google starts a Chrome "v2" from scratch and we'll have a few more years with a good early Chrome browser experience until that one is sold. And the cycle continues...
southernplaces7 2y ago
As annoying as chrome can be under Google, i'd hate to imagine the dumpster fire it would become if run by OpenAi, as an "AI-first experience".
- troupo 2y ago
  you can already expreinece this with HAVE YOU TRIED GEMINI Google's GEMINI IS HERE own ACTIVATE GEMINI produGEMINIcts
flakiness 2y ago
Two of top Chrome co-founders, beng and darin, who are also Firefox alumni, are now working at OAI. It's rather surprising if they do not build a web browser. These are browser people. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengoodger/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-fisher-7059ab/ I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. They can just fork it. This feels more like trolling to me tbh.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  Perhaps they will fork it anyway, but the type of people that ill flock to an OpenAI web browser are the people that already install and use ChatGPT. Chrome specifically hands a huge audience of tech laggards over to OpenAI very very quickly.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  I think it's less about the difficulty of forking versus buying Chrome and more about not wanting to compete with a Google owned Gemini enabled Chrome
- chvid 2y ago
  It is about brand and who gets to be default search engine.
- dspillett 2y ago
  > I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. Momentum. Any change of direction they take after such a purchase is taken by a huge number of current users whether they like it or not (unless they dislike it enough to make the effort to switch their daily driver browser). > They can just fork it. That would result in much lower user numbers unless their changes are incredibly attractive. Most users will start where they are due, again, to product momentum.
- npc_anon 2y ago
  When you fork Chrome, you have zero users instead of 4 billion.
  - 2y ago
tiffanyh 2y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the DOJ requires Chrome to be sold off ... they would also not allow the new owner of Chrome to get revenue from search engines to be the default search engine. In which case, what is the monetization model for the new owner of Chrome - other than just buying a daily portal where users go?
- VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  > if the DOJ requires Chrome to be sold off The DOJ doesn't require anything. They are the ones arguing for Chrome to be sold off. The federal court is the one that would require a particular remedy outcome to the anti-trust conviction. > they would also not allow the new owner of Chrome to get revenue from search engines to be the default search engine There would be no such mandate. Google will be allowed to pay the new company to be their default search provider. And other search providers can bid on that opportunity as well. Google itself just cannot own the business end-to-end as it does now.
  - tiffanyh 2y ago
    But related, isn't the DOJ targeting Mozilla for exactly what I described above ... that because Google can pay so much for being the default search engine - it's not creating an environment for fair competition. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/google-remedies-browsers/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/google-r...
    - npc_anon 2y ago
      Correct, and it's a proper moral test for Mozilla, which they obviously fail.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
And you all still won't use firefox, mostly for silly or dumb reasons.
- kleiba 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
rdsubhas 2y ago
Give it to Apache Software Foundation please, with a good grant.
paxys 2y ago
Why do people think OpenAI can even afford Chrome? It's estimated to be worth $20 billion or more. Just meaningless clickbait to stay in the headlines, like "Perplexity wants to buy TikTok".
redbell 2y ago
> But who would buy it? An OpenAI executive says his employer would be interested. These days, OpenAI seems to be leaning more toward expending its business beyond AI. Not sure why, but they may have come across a roadblock that is holding them back from achieving AGI soon. The past few days we heard that they maybe in the process of building a social network [1] and the willingness to buy the AI IDE, Windsurf [2]. Also, from the article: > Among the DOJ's witnesses on the second day of the trial was Nick Turley, head of product for ChatGPT at OpenAI. Perplexity has also been asked to testify in the Google DOJ case [3] and their opinion about Chrome was: "Google should not be broken up. Chrome should remain within and continue to be run by Google. Google deserves a lot of credit for open-sourcing Chromium, which powers Microsoft's Edge and will also power Perplexity's Comet. Chrome has become the dominant browser due to incredible execution quality at the scale of billions of users" _________________ 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43694877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43694877 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716856 3. https://x.com/AravSrinivas/status/1914373458982805888 https://x.com/AravSrinivas/status/1914373458982805888
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43765171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43765171
xnx 2y ago
OpenAI must be planning to release their own browser. After their crawler gets blocked from properties with valuable data, vacuuming up data directly from the user agent is the best workaround.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  This is my only fear about this, honestly. I already had to put my websites behind a login as that's the only realistic defense against LLM crawlers. If the data collection is moved to the browser, though, then requiring a login would no longer be adequate protection. I'd have to also ban the use of Chrome itself. I'd have to seriously consider the possibility of just not having a web presence in any form.
  - ArinaS 2y ago
    Use Anubis - https://anubis.techaro.lol/ https://anubis.techaro.lol/.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      There's very little actual information about Anubis there. At least, I couldn't find much, but perhaps I missed some docs. I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of PoW solutions for this sort of thing, but I'm open to learning about new approaches. How would PoW be effective when the adversary is the user's browser itself and the user is already authenticated?
      - xena 2y ago
        Most scrapers don't run browsers. Making the scrapers run real browsers changes the economics of scraping and makes it less cost-effective. I am working on making it allow more traffic by default and then applying challenges based on request pressure or other factors like system load. I also need to finish the WebAssembly PR and a few other important things. It's a work in progress, but it's used by the United Nations so it can't be that bad :)
JeremyNT 2y ago
If there's one thing that might help save firefox, it would be OpenAI ruining Chrome by adding a bunch of AI slop into it.
JasmineSCZ 2y ago
It looks to me like he's planning to make a browser himself.

150 points by pseudolus 2y ago

About 17 years too late to be AI-first.

MMW: This will be the death of Chrome. I also do not see Google parting with something so critical to their advertising. With their own browser they control the full length of the wire between the ad-server and the user. Without it, they don't. Only way I could see this happening is if Google then released what they considered a better browser.

close04 2y ago
> I also do not see Google parting with something so critical to their advertising. This is not really their choice at this point. They were already found to have abused their position so it's up to a judge to decide what Google has to to next. Google doesn't need "a browser", they need a tool that allows them to exercise more control and this whole court case is about preventing that. OpenAI is just looking for new ways to funnel data into the training of their models. And I'm afraid so many people would eat it up as long as OpenAI gives them some AI candy in return.
whataguy1997 2y ago
[dead]
VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
> I also do not see Google parting with something so critical to their advertising. With their own browser they control the full length of the wire between the ad-server and the user. Without it, they don't. They've already been convicted of anti-trust behavior for precisely this reason. Now the trial is in the remedy phase where the DOJ is asking that they be forced to divest ownership of Chrome and other properties. Google will have no choice in the matter. It's entirely up to the judge at this point.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  Up to 'the' judge', plus the many other appellate judges, unless DoJ and Google come to an agreement and Google decides not to appeal. Google can both appeal the original verdict and any remedies.

majormjr 2y ago

Why not fork it like Microsoft did with Edge?

tokai 2y ago
Cause the value is in the users. The actual browser is close to worthless.
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  Chrome/Chromium's value is in the development momentum. You can pile up features, manipulate the entire web, and make it impossible to compete for others. This is what they're trying to buy. A fork isn't enough - there's a huge difference between a technical fork and a meaningful fork.
  - tokai 2y ago
    That's a strength of Chrome for Google. OpenAI would not enjoy the same benefits as they don't control the whole vertical. They want the 4 billion strong spyware botnet that is Chrome.
  - claudex 2y ago
    You have to control a meaningful part of the web (like the Google ecosystem) for that to work.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Tepix 2y ago
Microsoft Edge is relying on Chromium being contiously developed by Google, isn't it? Not a hard fork that no longer receives updates from upstream.

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago

I don't even use chrome and this sounds miserable. I had to run it for something the other day and immediately got nagged to remove uBlock Origin because they automatically disabled it. And I'm just thinking.. I will never, ever use this browser for anything other than light dev work if I really needed to.

socalgal2 2y ago
Using ublock origin lite, haven't noticed a difference. It still blocks all the ads including google's and youtube.

criddell 2y ago

I think it could be interesting to see Chrome sold to ten or more different entities. Allow none of them to use the Chrome name. The last thing Google can do with Chrome is have it randomly select one of the new variations for updates.

paxys 2y ago
Let's give Chrome to a million different entities, for free. None of them can use the name. We can remove all the Google add-ons as well. Call it something like... Chromium?
stogot 2y ago
How would this even work in practice? Hundreds of million installs out there already use Chrome. How do they get updates (from servers) and which browser does it upgrade to?
- criddell 2y ago
  The DOJ / FTC / W3C / SEC / whomever vets all of the entities purchasing a share of the Chrome userbase. Part of the purchase agreement would be to have the update and development infrastructure in place and commit to updating their version of the browser and making good faith efforts to adhere to W3C standards for the next 3 years. Once the sale details are finalized, Google pushes out a final update that changes where the next update to Chrome would come from (and it would be a random selection from the list of buyers).

mkl 2y ago

Make default search be a version of ChatGPT and put ads on it? Could work (I wouldn't use it though). The way a lot of people use their browser they might be fine with it if it puts navigation-type links up top (I have literally seen a technical colleague with a PhD do a Google search for "x" and click a link rather than type the ".com"). The inference costs would surely make it hard to profit from though. Having just closed a $40 billion USD funding round [1], OpenAI might actually be able to afford a fair price for Chrome (supposedly $15-20 billion USD [2]). [1] There are some catches to that: https://www.investopedia.com/openai-closes-up-to-usd40b-funding-round-valuing-chatgpt-maker-at-usd300b-11706662 https://www.investopedia.com/openai-closes-up-to-usd40b-fund... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chrome+sale+valuation https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chrome+sale+valuation

usrusr 2y ago
Ads? Customers would not pay for ads, they would pay for getting convenient "truths" emphasized in the training material, and inconvenient ones deemphasized. Imagine Wikipedia with pay-to-edit.
- rchaud 2y ago
  That's the beauty of ads. Customers don't pay, the advertisers do.
  - usrusr 2y ago
    Customers are whoever is paying. Non-paying users are not customers, they are the resource to be sold.
vbezhenar 2y ago
If I'm typing website name, I'm always using Google to ensure that I won't mistype it and won't land on malware domain. Google always corrects me and will make sure that search results are safe.
- neuroticnews25 2y ago

drdrek 2y ago

You can ignore it, this is just a page taken from the Musk school of attention farming.

GuB-42 2y ago
It actually kind of makes sense. The DOJ wants to break what it considers to be Google's monopoly, and Chrome is a prime target. The problem is that Chrome by itself is worse than worthless, it is a money sink and it only makes sense as a part of a system. OpenAI is starting to feel the competition. ChatGPT is no longer the only game in town, DeepSeek happened, Google is becoming actually good, Claude is quite popular among coders, and Grok is not a joke anymore. They need something if they don't want to lose out, and buying the most popular browser to make it into a gateway into their service may be an option.
- Alifatisk 2y ago
  > Google is becoming good Where?
  - fscaramuzza 2y ago
    New Gemini models are quite good, Gemini 2.5 Pro is 1st in the user-benchmarks [1]. They also have Gemma, very good model that can run locally [2]. Benchmarks are not oracles of truth, but I feel like Google is not a kid who arrived late at the party anymore. [1] https://lmarena.ai/ https://lmarena.ai/ [2] https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-3/ https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-3/
    - danielbln 2y ago
      Yeah, with Gemini 2.5 Google stepped up to the grown up AI table and added on top. I still have a soft spot for Claude for general purpose chats, but have fully switched to Gemini for dev.
    - nisegami 2y ago
      Considering that several key breakthroughs happened at Google that made GPT-style LLMs possible (e.g. Attention is all you need paper), it's more like they took a long smoke break than showed up late.

Tepix 2y ago

Google is likely to have 1000 people or so working on Chrome and Chromium. That's going to be difficult to maintain. If OpenAI takes over i expect Chrome and Chromium to go closed source.

socalgal2 2y ago
[flagged]
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Chromium would be hard to relicense due to copyright but trivial to fork. So, chromium won't go away. Those 1000+ people are the main resource here. Effectively they work mostly on chromium and not on chrome. What happens to chromium if that stops? My guess is MS might step up and hire people.
- ArinaS 2y ago
  > "So, chromium won't go away." Sadly, it absolutely can go closed-source as it's licensed under BSD-3 clause, which is not a copyleft license.
  - dabockster 2y ago
    I think the old versions would still be OSS (or "source available" at the very least) and could be used in some way in other products.
    - jillesvangurp 2y ago
      The old version would stay licensed exactly as it is. You can't retroactively change a license. Technically any form of re-licensing the original implies some kind of fork happens. The old system continues to exist for anyone that has a copy. The license allows anyone to fork of course. So anyone with a copy could just pretend that's the main fork. Chromium is actually a complicated project. Some of the project coordination is actually taken care of by the Linux Foundation; not by Google. But Google of course controls and hosts the key code repositories. However, they don't own the code base exclusively though because they have been accepting contributions from e.g. Microsoft and the many other companies that base their browser on Chromium. And of course individual developers. Copyright stays with those. The partial permissive licensing (it's a mixed license code base) makes it possible to incorporate the code in a closed source system. But some of the components are LGPL, which still would require publishing the code of those components. And of course Chrome is an example of such a system and Chromium is the way they publish the source code. And Edge. And Brave. Etc. Chromium is the shared source code base for those. But it doesn't allow Google (or anyone) to take away the copyright from contributors. That would require a copyright transfer agreement. And no such thing exists for Chromium. So, Chromium is unlikely to stop existing. And if it somehow does, it would immediately trigger a fork with a different name created by all the stakeholders that would require such a thing. The only question is who ends up employing the Google employees that currently provide most of the code contributions and who owns the Chromium trademark (Google currently). IMHO that's an unhealthy situation that should be resolved in any case. And with multiple wealthy companies using chromium, funding that should be no issue.

santiagobasulto 2y ago

This sounds a bit clickbaity, they could just fork Chromium and build their own version as Edge or Brave. After all, they already have the distribution (ChatGPT).

gaiagraphia 2y ago
Surely they'd be wanting to buy 3.5billion users, though? I actually wonder what the price tag is for that, lol.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  That's it, if Chrome goes independent and / or is opened up for purchase, it's a very attractive target for companies for data harvesting. I mean I'm sure Google does as well (and got in trouble for e.g. incognito mode not being as incognito as advertised), but they keep it under wraps and make sure to not scare people off.
podgietaru 2y ago
If they get chrome they can push updates to the already existing user base. They’d be buying the user base.
- seydor 2y ago
  but my main reason for using chrome is my google account
  - nfRfqX5n 2y ago
    Is there any talk about how google account integration would change if they were forced to sell?
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    I guess most people use chrome because it is the default. Some people think I don't have internet because I don't have a chrome icon.

sidcool 2y ago

Isn't it easier to buy Brave or Opera?

qwertox 2y ago
Please let it be Opera, I'd never consider using it anyway.
- flakiness 2y ago
  Opera is owened by a Chinese entity today. Buying it can be much harder in today's environment. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/dealbook/china-opera-kunlun-qihoo-golden-brick.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/dealbook/china-o...
constantcrying 2y ago
It would be even easier to make a minimum effort fork of chromium. What would be the point though?

schnable 2y ago

I wonder if OpenAI would monetize the browser primarily by collecting user data and advertising, or by pushing ChatGPT subscriptions.

gaiagraphia 2y ago
I guess they could effectively copy Kagi's model at mammoth scale - offering a premium internet browsing experience with a 'personalised assistant'. Easy to convince at least 10% of the users to sign in to their browser with a verified credit card to 'protect the children', and governments around the world would give you full support. At that point, would be trivial for them to track browsing habits, and then to start offering personalised assistants which save you time and eventually cost money. Pretty sure you could save money throuh having a huge botnet of computers to tap into, and a huge amount of data to help cache and standardise common requests.

seydor 2y ago

didnt they consume the entire web to make their models? Buying chrome is an anachronism, like google buying godaddy. ah nevermind, it's just billionaire pissing contest

gaiagraphia 2y ago
They've consumed yesterday's web. Why not get the user to pay the energy and processing bill for subsequent rounds? Being able to track the habits of 3.5 billion users at source is probably quite useful, too.
- tgfrr 2y ago
  Imagine using the largest browser user base as an unlockable botnet for scraping, built right into their browser itself.
motoxpro 2y ago
I think you're missing what makes consumer companies valuable. It's all about distribution. They get way more data (usage, browsing, etc.), they get 3.5 billion users (this is the main thing) and they get to be the interface for all those people onto the web. I just don't think they can afford it.

bilsbie 2y ago

Is anyone working on an Ai first phone? I think at the least I should be able to have Ai interact with anything on my screen. And beyond that it could even code interfaces on the fly depending on the task.

berkes 2y ago
Chrome is installed on (almost?) every Android phone. So they'd be buying much more than this. Not a new "AI phone", which has to gain traction, find users, convince people to switch, compete in highly competitive (hardware( and duopolized (OS, Software) landscape. I won't be suprised if amongst Android users, Chrome is one of the most installed apps - if only because many phones have it locked (i.e. its really hard or impossible to remove). Maybe "Google Assistant" is installed more than chrome, IDK. But Chrome has the additional benefit that it is also installed on many iPhones. Sou Chrome would be a gateway into "making your iPhone an AI phone" too.
dmd 2y ago
It almost sounds as if you believe this would be a good thing.
ivape 2y ago
It kind of shows the state of Indie development over the last 2 decades that it's only the big players that can move mountains. Linux on the phone never happened, and it seems like we are all resigned to the fact that the future AI phone OS/AI browser will be made by the titans and not anyone else. Even if it came out of the open-source scene the titans just buy the damn thing.
hennell 2y ago
I have the latest S25 (regular not the oversized +) and it does a lot of AI first like things. It can see what's on the screen, summarize your day, circle to search etc. I disabled most of it within a few days because it mostly gets in the way of normal basic things like taking screenshots or just reading my actual notifications in full. The picture editing can be nice, but realistically there's just no need for most of its 'support', it's just clippy on your phone getting in the way.
2y ago

ivape 2y ago

I don't know what's going on here but it sounds like "Hey, I want to take your wife and have sex with her". Gotta read between the lines here. I think Google has a 14% stake in Anthropic. Along with Gemini, Chrome and Android as delivery vehicles, and search. The monopoly lawsuit is about this (the advertising ship sailed long ago, so what's this really about), and there's some nasty legal talk going on here. I think if they just give up the Anthropic stake and promise to allow any AI provider in chrome, then this nonsense will all end. /tinfoil

mcherm 2y ago

I am a big fan of having deep-pocketed corporations pay huge amounts of money to pay for open source products. I suppose this fits into that category.

diego_moita 2y ago
> deep-pocketed corporations pay huge amounts of money to pay for open source products. There are many names for this: co-opt, assimilate, bribing ... A lot of times it is like when Tony Soprano offers you a deal, or like when the U.S. made the NAFTA deal with Canada and Mexico. It feels good and awesome at the beginning but later on, when you become dependent on it, you'll have to pay an heavy price.
rchaud 2y ago
This is a transaction between 2 giant corporations. What is there to be a fan of? Chrome is not open-source, Chromium is.

jimmySixDOF 2y ago

Rony Abovitz, the founding energy behind Magic Leap, does this 'AI/XR Podcast' and last episode they discussed OpenAI rumors about a Social Network. As a founder himself who lived through being flavor of the day getting showered with venture money his observation was prescient: this 'I can do anything' approach is what happens to a certain kind of person (who will "eat everything on the table" is how he phrased it) given all checks and no balances. He contrasted that with someone like Jenson who pulled Nvidia off of a cliff more than once and so has the scartissue to limit his reach to keep focus on core business.

ants_everywhere 2y ago
> given all checks and no balances. Do you mean no checks and balances? A check is a restriction or constraint.
- wepple 2y ago
  I suspect this may be a play on words where checks = cheque, or money
  - pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
    "Balance" also has a financial meaning…
    - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
      I am stating the obvious to clarify: cheques without balances is an overdraft. You give a piece of paper that can't be exchanged for money when promised.
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        I don’t think that the saying has anything to do with money. It’s about power, oversight and preventing overreach. Of course, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t used in reference to money by the OP.

Moosdijk 2y ago

With which money, Sam?

blitzar 2y ago
Someone elses.
preommr 2y ago
Just shave off a few billion from that 7 trillion dollar plan. What's the big deal?

ratatoskrt 2y ago

I see a great future for Firefox.

insin 2y ago
Chrome: unilaterally disables uBlock Origin Mozilla response: mess around with Firefox's privacy notice in such a way that it generates _negative_ press Potential future Chrome: gets bought by OpenAI Estimated future Mozilla response: "every time a user installs Firefox, a healthy tree is chopped down, the wood is used to create bats with the user's name engraved on them, and the bats are used to hit endangered animals"
- stogot 2y ago
  I love Firefox but Mozilla seems determined to self-sabotage itself. it is painful to watch
ArinaS 2y ago
Mozilla will quite literally die if the demands of the judge get satisfied - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/mozilla-ceo-on-google-antitrust/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/mozilla-.... So I guess the last resort for people who don't want to surrender to the Big Tech will be niche hard forks of Firefox, of which there are 3 - Pale Moon, Basilisk and SeaMonkey.

busssard 2y ago

why do the not just make their own GPT browser?

nashashmi 2y ago

Honestly, Google should sell Search to OpenAI. And keep Chrome and the rest of Google. It will be contrary to what the DOJ intended. But it makes sense for Google and Open AI. By making search an AI first experience, both behemoths will signal the new dawn of AI is here. Google’s greatest advantage is the use of AI in drive and docs and presentation and excel and cloud services.

NegativeK 2y ago
AI search results (not just Google's) are so frequently incorrect that this would be disastrous.
- rchaud 2y ago
  Impaired assets are still assets, although it would be funny to see what fair market value would be for a busted search engine.
Jensson 2y ago
> Google should sell Search to OpenAI OpenAI can't afford to buy Search.

blitzar 2y ago

Buy stadium naming rights and we can call the high point for OpenAi.

Havoc 2y ago

ugh. Would much prefer they do something separate. The Chrome & derivatives mono-culture is going to become a problem down the line.

ksec 2y ago

So if Google sold off "Chrome" to OpenAI for billions. Now that OpenAI can push whatever update or search to Chrome as default. Assuming they have use of it. What would stop Google to build another browser say Information Explorer with the same engine and code? And market the hell out of it on its Web property?

hbrav 2y ago
> with the same engine and code Presumably they would be selling the IP rights, so at least some kind of rewrite would be required, possibly without utilizing staff who worked on Chrome.
- ksec 2y ago
  The Code is open source, they just get someone to package the browser into something different. Just like how M$ is doing with Edge? It would be funny though if they hire different people to build another browser on top of webkit again XD.
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    ...in rust, right? what an opportunity.
arealaccount 2y ago
Possibly a non compete?
VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
> What would stop Google to build another browser say Information Explorer with the same engine and code? The courts. The courts would stop them. The entire premise for Google selling-off Chrome is a mandate that they divest themselves from the business itself.
echoangle 2y ago
> What would stop Google to build another browser say Information Explorer with the same engine and code? And market the hell out of it on its Web property? Probably a court order, no? If you’re ordered to sell something, can you just recreate it immediately?

p0nce 2y ago

Well that would be a good way to kill off Chrome and get out of the mono-browser culture.

awei 2y ago

It is interesting how the data rush is changing, it was about Ads targeting, now it is about training AI. I wonder if one is better than the other for the open-source community? Would Chrome be more free or more locked-in with OpenAi

troupo 2y ago
> it was about Ads targeting, now it is about training AI. It's the same data rush. Don't fr a second think that "AI" will be used for anything but ads and selling your data t the highest bidder

jgalt212 2y ago

I guess OpenAI found a use for Masa's $40B.

iambateman 2y ago

This is the problem with breaking Chrome out of Google. It’s not just OpenAI, but the constellation of potential buyers is short and problematic. Is Apple a good buyer? Oracle? OpenAI? NVIDIA? The Saudis? (I think I’m kidding about that?) Someone is going to buy this for $100B and find a way to make a (big) profit off of it. I’m not sure the new landlord is going to be less rapacious than the last one was.

crowcroft 2y ago
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Similar to the current antitrust case with Meta. The time to have tackled these problems was probably about a decade ago.
- louthy 2y ago
  > Damned if you do, damned if you don't Only if you wait a few decades to break a monopoly up. This is the fall out of the lack of US government intervention in their megatech companies. We see the EU trying to fight back, but really all of this is far too late. There will be significant fall out, I’m sure. The sale of Chrome could be an unmitigated disaster.
  - crowcroft 2y ago
    Totally agree. I think the only option here would be separating the company into multiple companies. This seems to be the direction the Meta case is more likely to go in. Eg. Google could become, Google Search (and AI), YouTube, and an independent ad tech company with the remnants of DoubleClick (maybe Google Ads moves into this group as well and has deals with the other two entities).
tananaev 2y ago
If someone else buys Chrome, hopefully Google starts a Chrome "v2" from scratch and we'll have a few more years with a good early Chrome browser experience until that one is sold. And the cycle continues...

southernplaces7 2y ago

As annoying as chrome can be under Google, i'd hate to imagine the dumpster fire it would become if run by OpenAi, as an "AI-first experience".

troupo 2y ago
you can already expreinece this with HAVE YOU TRIED GEMINI Google's GEMINI IS HERE own ACTIVATE GEMINI produGEMINIcts

flakiness 2y ago

Two of top Chrome co-founders, beng and darin, who are also Firefox alumni, are now working at OAI. It's rather surprising if they do not build a web browser. These are browser people. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengoodger/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-fisher-7059ab/ I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. They can just fork it. This feels more like trolling to me tbh.

crowcroft 2y ago
Perhaps they will fork it anyway, but the type of people that ill flock to an OpenAI web browser are the people that already install and use ChatGPT. Chrome specifically hands a huge audience of tech laggards over to OpenAI very very quickly.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
I think it's less about the difficulty of forking versus buying Chrome and more about not wanting to compete with a Google owned Gemini enabled Chrome
chvid 2y ago
It is about brand and who gets to be default search engine.
dspillett 2y ago
> I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. Momentum. Any change of direction they take after such a purchase is taken by a huge number of current users whether they like it or not (unless they dislike it enough to make the effort to switch their daily driver browser). > They can just fork it. That would result in much lower user numbers unless their changes are incredibly attractive. Most users will start where they are due, again, to product momentum.
npc_anon 2y ago
When you fork Chrome, you have zero users instead of 4 billion.
- 2y ago

tiffanyh 2y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the DOJ requires Chrome to be sold off ... they would also not allow the new owner of Chrome to get revenue from search engines to be the default search engine. In which case, what is the monetization model for the new owner of Chrome - other than just buying a daily portal where users go?

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
> if the DOJ requires Chrome to be sold off The DOJ doesn't require anything. They are the ones arguing for Chrome to be sold off. The federal court is the one that would require a particular remedy outcome to the anti-trust conviction. > they would also not allow the new owner of Chrome to get revenue from search engines to be the default search engine There would be no such mandate. Google will be allowed to pay the new company to be their default search provider. And other search providers can bid on that opportunity as well. Google itself just cannot own the business end-to-end as it does now.
- tiffanyh 2y ago
  But related, isn't the DOJ targeting Mozilla for exactly what I described above ... that because Google can pay so much for being the default search engine - it's not creating an environment for fair competition. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/google-remedies-browsers/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/google-r...
  - npc_anon 2y ago
    Correct, and it's a proper moral test for Mozilla, which they obviously fail.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

And you all still won't use firefox, mostly for silly or dumb reasons.

kleiba 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

rdsubhas 2y ago

Give it to Apache Software Foundation please, with a good grant.

paxys 2y ago

Why do people think OpenAI can even afford Chrome? It's estimated to be worth $20 billion or more. Just meaningless clickbait to stay in the headlines, like "Perplexity wants to buy TikTok".

redbell 2y ago

> But who would buy it? An OpenAI executive says his employer would be interested. These days, OpenAI seems to be leaning more toward expending its business beyond AI. Not sure why, but they may have come across a roadblock that is holding them back from achieving AGI soon. The past few days we heard that they maybe in the process of building a social network [1] and the willingness to buy the AI IDE, Windsurf [2]. Also, from the article: > Among the DOJ's witnesses on the second day of the trial was Nick Turley, head of product for ChatGPT at OpenAI. Perplexity has also been asked to testify in the Google DOJ case [3] and their opinion about Chrome was: "Google should not be broken up. Chrome should remain within and continue to be run by Google. Google deserves a lot of credit for open-sourcing Chromium, which powers Microsoft's Edge and will also power Perplexity's Comet. Chrome has become the dominant browser due to incredible execution quality at the scale of billions of users" _________________ 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43694877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43694877 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716856 3. https://x.com/AravSrinivas/status/1914373458982805888 https://x.com/AravSrinivas/status/1914373458982805888

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43765171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43765171

xnx 2y ago

OpenAI must be planning to release their own browser. After their crawler gets blocked from properties with valuable data, vacuuming up data directly from the user agent is the best workaround.

JohnFen 2y ago
This is my only fear about this, honestly. I already had to put my websites behind a login as that's the only realistic defense against LLM crawlers. If the data collection is moved to the browser, though, then requiring a login would no longer be adequate protection. I'd have to also ban the use of Chrome itself. I'd have to seriously consider the possibility of just not having a web presence in any form.
- ArinaS 2y ago
  Use Anubis - https://anubis.techaro.lol/ https://anubis.techaro.lol/.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    There's very little actual information about Anubis there. At least, I couldn't find much, but perhaps I missed some docs. I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of PoW solutions for this sort of thing, but I'm open to learning about new approaches. How would PoW be effective when the adversary is the user's browser itself and the user is already authenticated?
    - xena 2y ago
      Most scrapers don't run browsers. Making the scrapers run real browsers changes the economics of scraping and makes it less cost-effective. I am working on making it allow more traffic by default and then applying challenges based on request pressure or other factors like system load. I also need to finish the WebAssembly PR and a few other important things. It's a work in progress, but it's used by the United Nations so it can't be that bad :)

JeremyNT 2y ago

If there's one thing that might help save firefox, it would be OpenAI ruining Chrome by adding a bunch of AI slop into it.

JasmineSCZ 2y ago

It looks to me like he's planning to make a browser himself.