Google is offering a far more pared-down solution to the court’s ruling that it illegally monopolized search
Normally I would laugh at them offering to resolve a second case to avoid judgement in the first one, but sadly they probably have enough influence to make it happen.
I wish I could get found guilty and still be able to negotiate on equal footing with the prosecution about what my punishment was going to be.
Chrome is the exact thing they shouldn’t keep. Their main weapon together with the search engine.
Anything but Chrome.
It’d be cool if at some point in the future Android and their Advertisement business were forced to split. Be a dream if they had to make Android open source again like it used to be.
IMHO that kind of advertisement business should be plain illegal. There are parts of it which are cheating, ultimately aimed at plausible deniability for “pay to be recommended” stuff. And what’s not cheating there, is something worse - commercial surveillance.
Advertisement relates to competition for customer’s attention the same way as lying relates to competition for listener’s approval. It’s just harmful.
Can we just stop and appreciate for a moment what a fucking outrage it is that Google is allowed to negotiate its own punishment at all?
You are allowed to suggest sentencing. This isn’t preferential treatment to Google. Of course, the judge doesn’t have to listen to anybody’s suggestions, but you are definitely allowed to make them.
“Look I’m guilty as fuck. However, hear me out. I totally learned my lesson and believe that an appropriate punishment of you allowing me to continue my, let’s say ‘less than legal’, business practices is a great punishment! And before you say it, I know! I know! I can also alter the way we operate with one of our millions of partners in a way that will yet again benefit me somehow and skirt legal ramifications for another 25 years. But look on the bright side, I don’t want to do any of this…you’re forcing me to do it!”
no.
I don’t get the boner the feds have for making Google sell Chrome. Maintaining a browser looks like a huge investment and as bad as Google is, there are much worse companies that would jump at the chance to buy it. Imagine some Tencent-tier corporation making you pay to have the ability to install extensions.
FFS the Chrome thing is nothing even. Who would even want it?
Chrome, as the damn-near-monopoly rendering engine, gives Google hegemony over web standards. That’s incredibly valuable because it puts them in a position to (e.g.) inflict DRM on the world.
Fair point.
Their desperation to hold onto it speaks volumes about how valuable it is to them. I’m sure they get tons of juicy browsing data that they don’t want to give up.
Yes but how will some other company who doesn’t run a successful ad network make aenough money from owning Chrome browser to keep it going?
It’s a good question because maintaining a modern web browser is a complicated and expensive project, which any potential buyer would have to sustain financially somehow. Chrome without the integrated ad service business would probably be highly unprofitable - so why would any business take it on?
The only real answer I can come up with is pretty ugly: data mining. Lots of services are dependent on Chrome that can’t just move to a new platform on short notice. Chrome is not just the web browser, it’s also the web engine for most mobile apps (a lot of apps are just stripped-down Chrome with a hard-coded server target).
Chrome has basically sucked all the air out of the room for other browser projects, so maybe taking it away from Google will create some space for new projects to grow… but it’s hard to see any of them becoming well-developed and trustworthy for things like health data, government services, financial transactions &etc anytime soon.
