I can make up numbers too!
Chrome shouldn’t be worth more than an IMAP client. If it is, then the web should be torn down and built anew.
IMAP is an incredibly simple protocol compared to the sum of all the protocols that are needed to implement a web browser.
A web browser also has to be way more performant.
Both an IMAP client and a web browser have to be reliable and secure. However achieving so in a system as complex as a web browser is incredibly expensive.
Web browsers are almost as complex as operating systems.
Complexity, performance, reliability and security on that level are expensive. You would be delusional to think a web browser should be worth as much as an IMAP client.
You would be delusional to think a web browser should be worth as much as an IMAP client.
This is a problem with web browsers and that set of protocols, not with my comparison.
You still ultimately run networked sandboxed applications in a web browser and view hypertext, it’s an unholy hybrid between two things that should be separated.
And it was so 20 years ago.
For the former Java applets and Flash were used a lot, as everyone remembers. The idea of a plugin was good. The reality was kinda not so much because of security and Flash being proprietary, but still better than today. For the latter no, you don’t need something radically more complex than an IMAP client.
I think Sun and Netscape etc made a mistake with JavaScript. Should have made plugins the main way to script pages.
Chrome is worth $49 Billion, this asshole on the internet guesstimates.
Given the core of the product is open source (see chromium) I find it really hard to believe that the brand is worth that. Google could sell it for an amount and release Android Internet and it will do almost exactly the same thing. And users I suspect won’t care. Google needs broken up for sure, but the browser brand makes little sense to me being separate
It’s not only about the brand, it’s about the installed base. You have hundreds of millions (billion plus?) of users who use your application every day for a wide variety of tasks.
And if you start fucking with them then they will all go to Google’s new browser. Just like the old one. Not all, but you get the picture. Chrome isn’t worth $50bn to anyone but Google
That is a possibility.
However, I think in this particular case, the DDG CEO is better qualified than me or you to evaluate the value of Chrome. I can’t think of any reason for Weinberg to promote an inflated valuation for Chrome.
CEOs are weird. DDG might be a privacy champion but it is still a for profit company. Meaning Weinberg wants to make bucks too. If Chrome is worth $50bn what does that make ddg worth? If Google get slapped with an anti-trust and forced to break up, who might benefit from the big bucks that might be floating around? And ever noticed how CEOs tend to fail up? Fluffing google is a nice advert for the next head of google search here.
Show me monetisation strategies, and hence value per user for the installed base if you want to claim that kinda figures imo
I agree with you, I may be even more cynical than you with respect to senior executives’ public statements and corporate PR.
I just don’t see a clear motive for the DDG CEO to inflate the valuation of Chrome. The examples you cite seem a bit far fetched (to me), I could be wrong of course.
Only if they monetise the hell out of it and sell people’s data.
