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The DOJ is asking the court to force Google to promptly and fully divest itself of Chrome, along with any data or other assets required for its continued operation. It is essentially aiming to take the Chrome user base—consisting of some 3.4 billion people—away from Google and hand it to a competitor
Fuck yes, shatter that shit.
Shatter it and probably have it bought out by Elon.
Seriously. The only people willing to pay what it's "worth" will end up doing the same thing (or worse).
What we need are some actual privacy laws with teeth, so that the data isn't worth as much to begin with.
Elon's a dunce, so he'll probably enshittify it so badly that people will leave. So google is weakened and chrome dies (at least, i hope in a good outcome)
That regular people would stop using chrome if it turned into xhrome is highly unlikely. These are people who browse without adblocker, use facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and buy Amazon echos. It'd just lead to Doge influencing the direction of xhromium based browsers.
Yeah but is it Elon&friends who will get to buy it?
The optimist in me hopes not, but only time will tell.
If he does i hope he tanks it so badly that it loses a huge chunk of market share - ideally when ladybird is ready.
Google says government proposals would "harm America’s consumers."
Says the company that couldn't stand by the core value "don't be evil".
Musk will be champing at the bit to own a controlling share of both of these. It disgusts me to agree with them but they're right. This is the single worst possible time to try and push this through.
This is the single worst possible time to try and push this through.
Which is why it's happening now, I agree.
But we, the non-billionaires are still better off after any monopoly split. It's hard to express how incredibly bad powerful monopolies are. The fact that another billionaire will be the buyer sucks, but it's no reason to back away from forcing the legally required split.
Monkey Paw:
Chrome is now owned by X
Its now known as Xrome
X for the swastica, and rome for the "roman" (aka: nazi) salute
Ykno what good. Maybe it'll cause Mozilla to get off their asses and DO SOMETHING.
The monkey giggles. Mozilla completely pivots to adtech & AI.
P.S. for the record, I continue using a Firefox fork and don't plan on stopping. Criticism where it's due, but I still think they're the best option.
Little does the monkey know theyre already starting that and I'm not surprised
You know what, good. Maybe it'll cause the people who keep using Chrome because they don't give two shits about their privacy to get off their asses and use something else.
Just like whole tribes are refusing to move from WhatsApp to Signal, because they say they care about privacy, but actually they don't.
Google is awful, but any other company that could afford to buy and run Chrome would be worse.
Microsoft Chrome - now with Cortana!
Heaven forbid it becomes its own company/a non profit.
Non profit under this US administration who's mantra is what rules? Seems highly optimistic. I see it being more likely that Musk takes the opportunity to try and get the most popular browser and phone OS that is used world wide.
100% guaranteed Musk is going to try and wrangle a controlling share of Android. Probably Chrome too but definitely Android. He desperately wants to be in your pockets snooping on your text messages and harvesting your contact data.
Sell it to who?
I would laugh if a European company stepped in to buy it. Most used browser in the whole entire world bought by a European company? Would absolutely be hilarious and I'd be so down for that to happen.
Take a guess who’s going to buy it.
Do Elon now. He owns way too much shit and always tries for a monopoly. Start by nationalizing star link.
So…. What are the odds on fElon ending up owning some of this shit?
Depends on how low we can sink his Tesla stock.
It's a team effort, if everyone throws one Molotov we can be done by April.
Good. Now do Amazon.
Looks like Google didn't bend the knee enough.
They'll bend eventually. Money does that.
Remember when DeSantis went to war with Disney? And Disney destroyed him and any chance he had to being a presidential candidate and we all cheered? Then Disney went around to make allegiance with all the non-DeSantis Republicans?
It's all money for stockholders at the end of the day. Not people, not who sits at the throne.
If they really wanted to change the character of the company, spin off the ad and cloud businesses into two separate things and let them figure out the rest.
selling android or breaking it up would be terrible since you just go back to each manufacturer making their own flavor with no updates or compatability.
Disagree, you might be right in the short term, but long term competition like that only benefits the customer.
I used to believe this, before google turned evil. Right now I'd take 5 shitty flavours than the pure shit google is doing. They have turned into a vile corporation that needs to be cut down
i really distrust Google and I'm glad about the verdict. I do agree that chrome and android should be ~~cut off models~~.
edit: cut off from advertising business models
on the other hand, like with Firefox, I'm worried about the instability and changes that are coming, mainly in the effect on fork projects Like Graphene, Calyx, Lineage, any privacy-focused Chrome forks, and of course Chromium.
DOJ probably isn't able to guarantee chrome & potentially android are taken over by totally ethical, stable companies/NPOs who will keep the projects open source, or allow an open source offshoot project to which the new organization would still contribute coding people-hours.
I'm sure there will be some sort of guarantees for stock chrome and android users, like paid services/subscriptions will be continued or refunded.
but what about users of community projects based on chrome and Android?
many other Lemmy users have commented how community projects don't really have the resources to keep browser engines up to date, let alone innovate. without Google (which i think is a good thing), Microsoft Edge team could become the de facto direction-setter of Chronium (which i think is really really really bad).
TL;DR the foss mobile OS community, and especially the foss browser community (considering Firefox funding shortfall and AI/ad revenue pursuits) are possibly f*ed in the a for the near term.
DOJ probably isn't able to guarantee chrome & potentially android are taken over by totally ethical, stable companies/NPOs who will keep the projects open source
This doesn't seem like their job. This is antitrust, as long as the result isn't monopolistic, that's it, no?
Ok but is this like REAL yet or did they just say they intend to?
Reading the article helps to answer this question:
The DOJ is asking the court to force Google to promptly and fully divest itself of Chrome, along with any data or other assets required for its continued operation.
It also links the filing, see specifically "III. Plaintiffs’ Revised Proposed Final Judgment"
Hell yes! Fuck google!
You’re happy until you figure out who’s going to buy it when it splits.