re: DOJ looking to force Google to sell its Chrome browser

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Every popular modern browser is based on chrome (chromium). The only exception is Firefox, which owns around 3% of the browser “market”… There is an illusion of completion, but it doesn’t exist. In fact, Google actually pays Firefox so they can continue to exist so they can always point to them and say “see there is competition!!!”

If you support this Google monopoly, enjoy the future where adblockers hardly work, or possibly not at all and the internet itself becomes unusable because daddy Google needs that Adsense revenue.

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Yet Mozilla (Firefox) created the rust programming language, which now incorporated in the Linux and Microsoft kernels. Google is now actively including rust into their projects likely antagonistic to their internal language GO.

No one is supporting a Google Monopoly, everyone should be supporting a US technology advancement because the alternative is not good. However, hubris is a bitch.

To add, Google is not wholly supporting Mozilla out of some false competition, they are funding them for new ideas and improvements.

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But at some point, does dominance become a monopoly?

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Sure, there's always going to be some inflection point. Eventually it's going to come down to terminology and definitions, actually define a monopoly, etc

At the end of the day imo, market dominance is not sufficient to determine a monopoly, a monopoly would be defined as a artificially propped up entity.

I would extend this further, to being, if in a free market, a company can dominate to a level that could be considered a monopoly, instead of tearing them down we should let them cook, as a rising tide lifts all boats.

As such, we should err on the side of being absolutely certain that a company is operating as a monopoly before intervening.

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I'd love to hear a principled argument on the benefits of the government stepping in and forcing a company to divest a product simply because its dominant.

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A couple points. One, a company that becomes dominant and organically creates a monopoly through sheer ability and dominance can then open itself to corruption and control. What if the government or a bad actor was able to take control of the company. They could effectively control that marketplace to the danger of the populace. Secondly, a dominant company can hinder innovation and competition. By controlling the marketplace, they have no need to innovate or change, the very antithesis of capitalism.

Take for example WWE. Once they put WCW out of business, they were wildly successful from a business standpoint. But critics pointed to their creative product and said how terrible the product itself was. They weren’t being forced to compete. Bring in AEW and over time it forced them to better their creative product. You need competition, and if no one can compete, I feel the government should step in.

That’s fine, I’d rather it my way. The power of the government agrees. Sounds good man!!

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Every popular modern browser is based on chrome (chromium). The only exception is Firefox, which owns around 3% of the browser “market”… There is an illusion of completion, but it doesn’t exist. In fact, Google actually pays Firefox so they can continue to exist so they can always point to them and say “see there is competition!!!”

If you support this Google monopoly, enjoy the future where adblockers hardly work, or possibly not at all and the internet itself becomes unusable because daddy Google needs that Adsense revenue.

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But Chromium is open-source. Sure the code is maintained by Google but what’s stopping anyone else from just creating a new fork and (for example) reverting whatever “bad” changes Google makes? Genuine question, because I’m admittedly not well-versed in Chromium’s license(s).

To me, this idea of simply forcing Google to sell Chrome - or the larger general idea of “solving” antitrust problems by forcing big tech companies to sell stuff - is a bit of a cop-out. It doesn’t really address the underlying problem with Google, the business model.

Granted the DOJ can only enforce laws on the books but the government (i.e. Congress) certainly can do something about it. Problem is that Google is too big to fail at this point.

F Google, but I'm not sure how this breaks up their search engine dominance.

I would be more worried about their gatekeeping of apps.

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I would be more worried about their gatekeeping of apps.

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Supposedly the DOJ also wants to make them unbundle the Google Play Store from Android OS.

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Supposedly the DOJ also wants to make them unbundle the Google Play Store from Android OS.

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When will they give Apple the same treatment?