4 ms·

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

by 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.
diggan 2y ago
> 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. Or, just an out-there idea, what if the Chrome became property of the government instead? Forced to be FOSS, put into maintenance mode and offer it as a truly user-focused browser instead of driven by any for-profit company (which will eventually run it into the ground).
- tomalbrc 2y ago
  Considering the questionable choices made by the current President of the US let's maybe not do this. Let's not act like this wouldn't be turned into a propaganda machine in minutes
- senordevnyc 2y ago
  Yeah, let’s put Trump in charge of the most popular browser in the world. What could go wrong?
- kouteiheika 2y ago
  Yep, move it into an independent non-profit foundation and have the government fund its development through taxes as a public good software that benefits everyone. The idea makes sense, which is why it'll never happen.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    > Yep, move it into an independent non-profit foundation and have the government fund its development through taxes as a public good software that benefits everyone. The idea makes sense, which is why it'll never happen. Or turn it into a tightly regulated natural monopoly, a la a public utility. But I totally agree with you: some things should just be state-owned. We should put our energies into identifying those things and addressing any legitimate concerns (e.g. spying via requiring open source and reproducible builds) instead of trying to free market all the things.
  - dabockster 2y ago
    Especially during the current (2025) iteration of the US government. All sides of the political spectrum will be accusing the program of having political bias against each other.
bambax 2y ago
But removing Chrome from Google makes zero sense and won't stop it from being a monopoly. The monopoly part comes from buying DoubleClick (in 2007!) -- that should never have been allowed. Not sure how to extract that part from Google now. It would be difficult, but probably quite effective.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  Quite effective at destroying anything good left of Google I would say. Google has a bunch of nice things (search, gmail, maps, ...) that cost money, and an advertising business that makes money, the former helping the latter. Split the two and the nice stuff will be without funding and die out, and only the "evil" part will survive. Or so I think. Splitting out Chrome will not change the face of the world, but Firefox has shown that an (somewhat) independent browser can work.
  - e3bc54b2 2y ago
    Those 'nice' parts of the google are feeding the 'evil' advertisement business. Now more than anything, the reason google's ad business is so rich specifically because they (and only they) know everything about most of the denizens to farm them efficiently and thus demand a premium. Take their feed away and the ad business livestock will suddenly be lot more docile.
  - troyvit 2y ago
    It would be interesting to hear how much a subscription to docs, gmail, maps, etc. would have to be to keep them operating at current levels.
    - dabockster 2y ago
      Google could have had solid competition if Garmin and TomTom made their offline map subscriptions available on phones instead of pushing their dedicated devices so hard. TomTom just started publishing their own apps during Covid, and Garmin is still nowhere to be found. There's also other apps like Magic Earth that use other data, but they're also super recent. I feel like the whole tech industry, especially the American part, really dropped the ball on this.

by GuB-42 2y ago

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.

diggan 2y ago

> 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. Or, just an out-there idea, what if the Chrome became property of the government instead? Forced to be FOSS, put into maintenance mode and offer it as a truly user-focused browser instead of driven by any for-profit company (which will eventually run it into the ground).

tomalbrc 2y ago
Considering the questionable choices made by the current President of the US let's maybe not do this. Let's not act like this wouldn't be turned into a propaganda machine in minutes
senordevnyc 2y ago
Yeah, let’s put Trump in charge of the most popular browser in the world. What could go wrong?
kouteiheika 2y ago
Yep, move it into an independent non-profit foundation and have the government fund its development through taxes as a public good software that benefits everyone. The idea makes sense, which is why it'll never happen.
- palmotea 2y ago
  > Yep, move it into an independent non-profit foundation and have the government fund its development through taxes as a public good software that benefits everyone. The idea makes sense, which is why it'll never happen. Or turn it into a tightly regulated natural monopoly, a la a public utility. But I totally agree with you: some things should just be state-owned. We should put our energies into identifying those things and addressing any legitimate concerns (e.g. spying via requiring open source and reproducible builds) instead of trying to free market all the things.
- dabockster 2y ago
  Especially during the current (2025) iteration of the US government. All sides of the political spectrum will be accusing the program of having political bias against each other.

bambax 2y ago

But removing Chrome from Google makes zero sense and won't stop it from being a monopoly. The monopoly part comes from buying DoubleClick (in 2007!) -- that should never have been allowed. Not sure how to extract that part from Google now. It would be difficult, but probably quite effective.

GuB-42 2y ago
Quite effective at destroying anything good left of Google I would say. Google has a bunch of nice things (search, gmail, maps, ...) that cost money, and an advertising business that makes money, the former helping the latter. Split the two and the nice stuff will be without funding and die out, and only the "evil" part will survive. Or so I think. Splitting out Chrome will not change the face of the world, but Firefox has shown that an (somewhat) independent browser can work.
- e3bc54b2 2y ago
  Those 'nice' parts of the google are feeding the 'evil' advertisement business. Now more than anything, the reason google's ad business is so rich specifically because they (and only they) know everything about most of the denizens to farm them efficiently and thus demand a premium. Take their feed away and the ad business livestock will suddenly be lot more docile.
- troyvit 2y ago
  It would be interesting to hear how much a subscription to docs, gmail, maps, etc. would have to be to keep them operating at current levels.
  - dabockster 2y ago
    Google could have had solid competition if Garmin and TomTom made their offline map subscriptions available on phones instead of pushing their dedicated devices so hard. TomTom just started publishing their own apps during Covid, and Garmin is still nowhere to be found. There's also other apps like Magic Earth that use other data, but they're also super recent. I feel like the whole tech industry, especially the American part, really dropped the ball on this.