America's Justice Department Still Wants Google to Sell Chrome (msn.com)
- Reference: 0176655281
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0232250/americas-justice-department-still-wants-google-to-sell-chrome
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-doj-reaffirms-biden-era-proposal-to-break-up-google/ar-AA1Au2V5
In a new filing Friday, America's Justice Department "reiterated its [2]November proposal that Google [3]be forced to sell its Chrome web browser ," reports the Washington Post, "to address a federal judge finding the company [4]guilty of being an illegal monopoly in August ."
> The government also kept a proposal that Google be banned from paying other companies to give its search engine preferential placement on their apps and phones. At the same time, the government dropped its demand that Google sell its stakes in AI start-ups after one of the start-ups, Anthropic AI, argued that it needed Google's money to compete in the fast-growing industry.
>
> The government's final proposal "reaffirms that Google must divest the Chrome browser — an important search access point — to provide an opportunity for a new rival to operate a significant gateway to search the internet, free of Google's monopoly control," Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing... Judge Amit Mehta, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who had ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly, will decide on the final remedies in April.
The article quotes a Google spokesperson's response: that the Justice Department's "sweeping" proposals "continue to go miles beyond the court's decision, and would harm America's consumers, economy and national security."
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/05/1355244/google-urges-doj-to-reverse-course-on-breaking-up-company
[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1378036/dl
[3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-doj-reaffirms-biden-era-proposal-to-break-up-google/ar-AA1Au2V5
[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/05/doj-google-monopoly-trial-judgment/
Will it make a differnce? (Score:2)
We seen Firefox get taken over by spyware pedlars and that was supposedly a non profit, any company that buys Chrome would add spyware to it as well. Browsers are so complicated now that spyware is practically required for debugging purposes. I'd say we need to go back to "web 1.0" with projects like Gemini protocol and deliberately reject new features.
Re: (Score:1)
> They would probably do as much as possible to close the source too, hampering or killing Chromium and other Chrome based browsers.
On one hand, they can easily take their code private going forwards because Chromium is under the extremely permissive 3-clause BSD license. On the other, it's actually feasible to make modifications to that software because it's not a tangled mess, so a fork from the latest released version should be much easier to maintain than a fork of Firefox. There do not seem to be too many Chromium forks, but some do exist, like Thorium.
On the gripping hand, some of the things people expect to be able to do on the m
Re: (Score:2)
With regard to the DRM problem, the community has dealt with this kind of thing before. It used to be that only Windows had codecs for particular video standards. Yet the community came up with ways to shim the proprietary code into video players that ran on Linux. I think that technical solutions that repurpose existing software components can probably be thought up, if we had a reasonable non-chrome browser.
Re: (Score:2)
The community has not been able to deal with the DRM problem, not really. You still can't use any of the major streaming services normally on Linux. Almost all of them cap the feed at standard def or maybe 720p for one or two of the better ones.
Frankly, breaking that chokehold that the big players like Windows, macOS, iOS and Android have and forcing content distribution to open standards would be a boon to moving people off those big but increasingly customer-hostile platforms. Linux gaming used to be a st
Re: (Score:2)
If Google thinks that too, then Google can divest Chrome to a non-profit, either an existing one like the Apache Foundation or the Linux Foundation, existing entities that manage and fund a large number of existing open source projects (no, not just Apache and the Linux kernel!), or create a new one in the mold of Mozilla.org.
Google doesn't have to sell it for cash money to the highest bidder if it believes, ultimately, such a move will harm its own business.
And also remember that Chrome is one of three maj
Ban tracking (Score:3)
Once tracking is out of the way then the playing field is levelled again. And with that the money stops flowing through the big Internet companies and we can get back to reality again.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, that would be nice, but what does it mean to "ban tracking"?
Does it mean "bad third-party cookies"? If so, that's pretty much already a thing. Every major browser at least has an option to block third-party cookies.
But let's say this became law, and every browser had to always block third-party cookies. There are a thousand other ways businesses track you.
- Web sites voluntarily (enthusiastically) send your data to aggregators like Google Analytics.
- Web sites often send your browsing data to marketer
Microsoft next? (Score:2, Insightful)
Will they revisit breaking up Micro$oft or were the bribes^Wdonations big enough?
Easier when you don't go the legal way. (Score:2)
Easier when you don't go the legal way but do it via an Executive Order, when the man is in signing mood he should also liberate Office from MS.
Re: (Score:2)
Liberate Office from Microsoft? You do understand that MS Office is a failed project that cannot really be advanced in anymore, right? Hmm. On the otehr hand,. that would propbably made that state obvious and nothing of value would be lost. Especially as o365 would be dead as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Failed or not, most companies are still depending on it, be it 365 or Office.
The problem is the commercial link between Windows and Office.
Re: (Score:2)
Failed project? Oh that's funny. While it's true that Azure is now MS's main income stream, Office and now Office 365 has always been MS's bread and butter. While technically is might be about as feature-complete as you can get, it's still MS's primary end-user product and makes plenty of money. Now with AI added in to give them reliable, annual revenue, they can stretch out the gravy train another decade or so.
Re: (Score:2)
In Google's case the reason for the break-up is from two different angles: Biden's DoJ seeing Google's abuse of data as a problem, and Trump's DoJ seeing Google as supposedly part of the "liberal media", via YouTube, that opposes it (never mind the fact that clearing cookies will almost instantly result in right wing videos being pushed to your logged out feed, that's what right wingers think.)
In Microsoft's case, there isn't a pre-existing DoJ action against Microsoft because the DoJ is afraid to touch it
Tread carefully (Score:3)
We already discussed this in length before on a prior Slashdot article.
The only real competition left in open-source, multiplatform browsing is Firefox. Mozilla, unfortunately, depends on Google's money. The same argument that Anthropic made is even MORE valid for Mozilla (but for different reasons).
The problem is that it is TOO LATE now for any simple correction. All other browsers are now semi-owned/controlled by Google. Yes, Google certainly is an illegal monopoly in many spaces. Yes, Google used their huge power to take over almost the entire browser space. Yes, this is extremely bad and dangerous in so many ways. Had this been stopped 10+ years ago, before all non-Firefox browsers dropped their code and just based their browsers on Chromium, things would have been much better.
I am not sure what would "work" at this point. Perhaps force the Chrome/Chromium browser code/copyright sale to a non-profit *and* require Google to pay the same amount to Mozilla for 10 years as damages, with no strings attached, while things recover and alternate revenue streams could be established (which I hope would be based on charitable foundations, government grants, etc).
Re: (Score:1)
There is nothing precluding a fork of Chromium that stays forked and is not controlled by Google. It remains OSS, and the license is extremely permissive.
Mozilla effectively (or literally, but I have no particular person or people in mind to blame) threw the game by spending the money Google gave them on everything but refactoring code to make it easier to maintain.
I like the idea of forcing Google to donate Chrome to a non-profit, but just look at how that isn't working out for Firefox. Just being a non-pr
Re: (Score:2)
> "There is nothing precluding a fork of Chromium that stays forked and is not controlled by Google."
Nothing legally. But practically, there is... resources. Forking and actually maintaining it (security, bugs, features) would be a hugely complex and resource-intensive endeavor. I fear only some mega-corporation could even attempt it, like Microsoft. And I am not sure that would put us in any better position. And we would still have only two effective browser bases- Chom* and Firefox. I estimate we
Re: (Score:1)
> But they are not "becoming an ad company."
They bought an ad company which is now part of their business. That means they became an ad company.
> Imagine if Mozilla fails and we are left with effectively a SINGLE engine codebase. That is insane.
It is a terrible thing to happen to a widely used standard that there is only really one implementation.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Allowing Google to poison all other browsers with Chromium that they control resulted in demonstrable efforts to undermine ad blockers and increase pervasive tracking. At this point Google had to not only be divested from browsers, but prevented from influencing other browsers or even better broken up.
Re: (Score:2)
Safari is still its own browser. Google doesn't own the Web yet. But Safari is effectively Apple-only now, and the only real game in town on iOS, so it's also not really doing much to encourage competition either way.
Re: yeah nothing will change (Score:3)
Guido has left Google a long time ago.
The last I heard, he is at Microsoft working on making cPython faster.
It would be interesting if Apple bought Chrome, but it is a heavily modified Safari, so I do not see that happening.
Sources: I used to work a few desks from Guido at Google, and I released the first version of Chrome to the public at the time.
Re: (Score:2)
The Linux Foundation helps fund rather [1]a lot of projects [linuxfoundation.org] that Torvalds has no involvement in. Some you've probably never heard of like Enarx, others, like RISC-V, are hyped here on a regular basis.
Even if it didn't exist, other successful non-profits exist that exist to manage swathes of open source projects. The one that immediately springs to mind is the Apache Software Foundation which funds many FOSS projects like OpenOffice, Eclipse (urgh, but yes, it funds that), and Pulsar.
[1] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects
Re: (Score:3)
What are these ads you speak of? I've never seen one.
They will miss it on all the data (Score:2)
And have to pay for all the user data they are getting out off chrome
Feint (Score:2)
They will bleat "oh, no, don't make us sell Chrome," in front of the cameras while a backroom deal has already been cut to ensure they retain YouTube and Rumble's illegal-tying lawsuit will be dismissed.
This is just the Microsoft IE lawsuit getting a Netflix remake, line by line.
Re: (Score:2)
This. Its all just for show. Google is making the required protection payments err I mean voluntary contributions to Trump.org, so all they need to do now is play the proper theatrical role, and theyre protected. This goes both ways. Trump wont actually mess with them, because he knows that google can actually do him some serious harm if they feel truly threatened. They control most of the worlds search engine market. All it would take would be some absolutely tiny tweaks to their search engine results, pr
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
Only a million at inauguration isn't enough to please the orange shit gibbon.
Google will need to shell out more.
But soon we'll hear about how bad Europe is.
Re: (Score:1)
This process was initiated when Biden was living in the Big House.
I'm rather worried about the arrogance and ignorance on display here - Apple has made it clear that others are also affected, and Mozilla will be in serious trouble if/when this goes through. What I don't like about the current quasi-monopoly is that changes to Chrome - changes to JavaScript syntax for instance - have the effect of a new standard with other browsers having to follow suit. A fair number of websites also only render properly
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla will be in serious trouble
Oh no, how awful.
Being paid umpteen milllions for failing sure has made their products, especially Firefox, so much better.
Re: Well (Score:3)
Drop back to Firefox a good fifty releases ago and tell me that there hasnâ(TM)t been a ton of improvements. The fact that they are able to build a full web browser with a tiny fraction of the resources spent on Chromium or WebKit is nothing short of a miracle.
Re: (Score:3)
Musk bribed more.
Survival of the Bribiest.
It's not about money (Score:2)
It's about power. The Republican party wants Google to suppress their critics and boost their media outlets. Google has been trying to avoid that because they watched the churches do it and they watched Twitter do it and they watched the user base collapse.
Twitter is lost 80% of their users and with it 80% of their revenue. And church attendants continues to crater especially among women who are the ones that bring the men in.
It's like they say, Go fasc, no cash. Yeah it's extremely useful for the Rep