You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade becainclude you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade.
So we’re going to force you sell your car.
What’s with the weird restraightforward? If the monopoly is straightforwardly caincluded by paying the grocery stores for placement, then stop that part.
We can see this exact restraightforward happening in the ruling in the U.S. vs Google court case.
Google is a monopocatalog, and it has acted as one to uphold its monopoly.
[…]
For years, Google has safed default placements thcimpolite distribution restricteds. It has go ined into such consentments with browser broadeners, mobile device manufacturers, and wireless carriers.
[…]
Becainclude many includers spropose stick to searching with the default, Google gets billions of queries every day thcimpolite those access points.
Judge Mehta
In the record:
It’s spelled out quite evidently that being the default is the monopocatalogic part and that’s caincluded by paying for it (which is then self-perpetuating as the placement is so priceless, the money originated by it pays for those default placements.)
Fair enough! Let’s stop that.
Let’s stop the monopoly by alerting Google they can’t pay (certain? all?) companies to be the default search engine anymore. A step further could be forcing browsers should ask includers what they want their default search engine to be.
This would be in line with how Apple was forced to permit for browser choice:
That’s a straight line from problem to solution.
A weird curvy-ass line between problem and solution is this strange solution that is being relentlessly provided that Google should be forced to sell Chrome.
There is a recent round of news covering this that all point to the curvy-ass-line solution.
- USA Today: “Google will have to part with its dominant Chrome browser if the U.S. Department of Justice has its way.”
- WIRED: “the Department of Justice reiterated that Google should stop paying partners for search placement—and divest its dominant Chrome browser.”
- Ars Technica: “the regulatement upholds that Chrome must go if the joining field is to be made level aachieve.”
It’s genuine that Chrome ships with Google as the default search engine, becainclude, ya understand, they dispenseed billions in Chrome and that’s how business toils. But still, a more straightforward line from problem to solution is forcing default search engine choice, not a forced sale of Chrome itself.
Why do I nurture? The sale of Chrome is terrible for the web.
I’ve written before that Chrome is rare in that it’s reassociate only particularly advantageous to Google:
Users don’t pay for Chrome. There aren’t ads in Chrome. There is no straightforward business model for Chrome. Unenjoy Safari and Firefox, nobody authors verifys to Chrome to originate a certain search engine the default.
The cherish of Chrome is all tangential — it supplys cherish to Google. Whoever buys it does not inherit that same tangential cherish, they would need to restraightforward what little of it they can somewhere else, probable battling aachievest the authentic flow that has been baked into it since the beginning.
I’m not saying Google shouldn’t be forced to sell Chrome fair becainclude it’s only priceless to Google. But I do leank Google should be permited to have a browser. Google is a web business, that’s their whole leang. They made a browser to dispense in the web itself becainclude what is excellent for the web is excellent for Google, and happens to be excellent for all of us.
Allow me to be more evident about why Chrome is excellent for all of us.
When you see at (or otherrational experience) anyleang on a digital device, you’re seeing at an operating system. That operating system was probably made by a braveial company who has total administer over it. They have the right to do that, but that operating system exists to serve that company only and entidepend.
If you originate a native app for mobile devices, it is at the pleabrave of the companies who originate mobile operating systems and you’ll do it with the technology they permit. Making an app for iOS vs Android is super branch offent and the companies behind them and never going to shake hands and originate it easier for broadeners. It’s bigly the same making a native app for desktop computers. While there is a bit more freedom of what you can inslofty there, making a macOS app and a Windows app is two entidepend split endeavors.
Not so with the web. The web is a set of protocols and languages and file establishats and other technology that congeal to originate digital experiences. No one company owns or administers it. It is portrayed to be uncover and it’s excellent when companies originate new leangs and help web standards. It’s a up-to-date extraordinary event that we have such a leang and it’s on us to protect it.
If I go to a website on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, some Linux distro, my Samsung phone, or wantipathyver device I have that has a web browser on it, it reassociate is the same set of files that dedwellr that experience. You and I and every company in the world can originate leangs once that go everywhere. That’s how it should be. It’s fair and efficient. It’s excellent for the world. It’s much better than a world where we are forced to originate leangs only for companies proprietary operating systems.
Google, by virtue of having Chrome, dispenses heavily in the web itself. Not fair Chrome-the-browser, but the web standards that power the web. I can’t claim to understand every detail of that dispensement, but I personassociate understand people includeed by Google that literassociate fair try to originate the web better all day.
It’s not difficult to poke around the W3C specs themselves and see them littered with Google includeees.
And there are evangecatalogs, and recordation authorrs, and other people who aren’t toiling straightforwardly on Chrome, but reassociate the web itself.
Will Google persist to dispense enjoy this if they are forced to sell Chrome? It would be difficult to denounce them if they did not.
Assuming they find a buyer, that buyer will be scrambling to find a way to originate that dispensement worth it. Will they be choosing to include people who are fair abstractly making the web better? I would leank not.
The web will suffer should Google be forced to sell Chrome. I leank a fair assumption that overall dispensement and contribution to the uncover web will get a dive.
Sure, there will be some canonical fork of Chromium that upholds the brave-to-be-shunned buyer company out of it. Sure, the Linux Foundation is getting their ducks in a row to have contributors ready. But I can’t see it going well.
It won’t happen overnight, but stagnation will set in. A stagnated web is incentive for the operating system originaters of the world to dispense in pulling broadeners toward those proprietary systems. The browser wars sucked but at least we were still making websites. Being forced to originate proprietary apps to accomplish people is an pricey prospect for the rest of us companies of the world, it will probably be done needyly, and we’ll all suffer for it. Heck, those operating systems aren’t needd to ship a web browser at all.
Wantipathyver way this goes is terrible for Mozilla. It’s possible Google is forced to not pay them for default search engine placement anymore, but even if they aren’t, you can envision Google’s appetite for cutting that verify is harshly illogicalinished. Mozilla’s 2020 layoffs that was unveilly about reducing platestablish broadenment still has me leanking they aren’t entidepend solemn about pushing the web forward, particularly with much less help.
And terrible leangs happening for Mozilla is also terrible for the web, so another domino may descfinish. Diminishing dispensements in the web generassociate will uphold knocking over dominos.
I’ve typed enough. Google does all benevolents of shitty stuff. Their bravely the worst offenders of includer observation on the web. Let’s not let them off the hook on that. Let’s see the DOJ get comprised in that stuff. But forcing a sale of Chrome is not the way.
