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Why would they pay so much money for Chrome? They could just fork chromium for free? 34B is just for web address?

by riku_iki 1y ago

svantana 1y ago
I'm guessing the installed user base make up the bulk of the value.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  After selling Chrome to Perplexity, Google could just announce the end of life for Google Chrome, without an upgrade path. Then it's up to Perplexity to get these users to install Perplexity Chrome.
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    I'm sure part of the sale terms would be gracefully handing over control
jlokier 1y ago
For the users, via the Chrome brand, and via being pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android. By far most users run Chrome, not Chromium forks, and this would continue after a competent acquisition. Whoever owns Chrome decides exactly what software most users run for web browsing, decides future web standards in practice, decides which kinds of extensions most users can use, decides the limits and carve-outs of adblockers, codecs and web features, has all the telemetry, and in future decides what AI-driven "presentational" modifications to web pages will be done, and what semantic scraping and uploading will happen automatically in the browser.
- Ferret7446 1y ago
  If Google loses Chrome though, it will no longer be pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android. They will just fork Chromium, call it something else, and pre-install that. Sure they might lose some Windows users who miss the news reports and don't install the replacement and keep using Chrome, until their bookmark sync stops working since that relies on proprietary Google account integration.
  - jlokier 1y ago
    > If Google loses Chrome though, it will no longer be pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android That would depend on the contract. For $34.5B, I would expect the contract to say Google agrees to continue pre-installing Chrome on Chromebooks and Android for many years, with financial penalties if they don't.
tiagod 1y ago
A lot of people think The Internet == Chrome == Google
Hamuko 1y ago
>We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing their source ASNs to hide their crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to even fetch — robots.txt files. Yeah, I'm sure that Perplexity would only have noble ideas in mind if the acquire a piece of software that is installed on >60% of the web-browsing population and automatically updates in the background.

Why would they pay so much money for Chrome? They could just fork chromium for free? 34B is just for web address?

svantana 1y ago

I'm guessing the installed user base make up the bulk of the value.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
warkdarrior 1y ago
After selling Chrome to Perplexity, Google could just announce the end of life for Google Chrome, without an upgrade path. Then it's up to Perplexity to get these users to install Perplexity Chrome.
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  I'm sure part of the sale terms would be gracefully handing over control

jlokier 1y ago

For the users, via the Chrome brand, and via being pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android. By far most users run Chrome, not Chromium forks, and this would continue after a competent acquisition. Whoever owns Chrome decides exactly what software most users run for web browsing, decides future web standards in practice, decides which kinds of extensions most users can use, decides the limits and carve-outs of adblockers, codecs and web features, has all the telemetry, and in future decides what AI-driven "presentational" modifications to web pages will be done, and what semantic scraping and uploading will happen automatically in the browser.

Ferret7446 1y ago
If Google loses Chrome though, it will no longer be pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android. They will just fork Chromium, call it something else, and pre-install that. Sure they might lose some Windows users who miss the news reports and don't install the replacement and keep using Chrome, until their bookmark sync stops working since that relies on proprietary Google account integration.
- jlokier 1y ago
  > If Google loses Chrome though, it will no longer be pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android That would depend on the contract. For $34.5B, I would expect the contract to say Google agrees to continue pre-installing Chrome on Chromebooks and Android for many years, with financial penalties if they don't.

tiagod 1y ago

A lot of people think The Internet == Chrome == Google

Hamuko 1y ago

>We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing their source ASNs to hide their crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to even fetch — robots.txt files. Yeah, I'm sure that Perplexity would only have noble ideas in mind if the acquire a piece of software that is installed on >60% of the web-browsing population and automatically updates in the background.