Feds may target Google's Chrome browser for breakup

[douglas9]

Justice Department and state prosecutors investigating Google for alleged antitrust violations are considering whether to force the company to sell its dominant Chrome browser and parts of its lucrative advertising business, three people with knowledge of the discussions said Friday.

The conversations — amid preparations for an antitrust legal battle that DOJ is expected to begin in the coming weeks — could pave the way for the first court-ordered break-up of a U.S. company in decades. The forced sales would also represent major setbacks for Google, which uses its control of the world’s most popular web browser to aid the search engine that is the key to its fortunes.

Discussions about how to resolve Google’s control over the $162.3 billion global market for digital advertising remain ongoing, and no final decisions have been made, the people cautioned, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential discussions. But prosecutors have asked advertising technology experts, industry rivals and media publishers for potential steps to weaken Google’s grip.


https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/10/feds-may-target-googles-chrome-browser-for-breakup-428468

[mr_lebowski]

1. I'm sure it's nothing a $50M contribution to IQ45's re-election campaign won't fix (nt)

[The Magistrate]

2. Doubtless So, Sir

[VA_Jill]

3. Chrome is terrible anyway

so I don't use it. Spousal unit informed me early on that it's the worst one for spying on you. Anyway, it's aimed at M$ users and we are a proud Mac household, so there's that. But we do split on browser's. He's firmly in the Safari camp, and I like Vivaldi (a derivative of Opera, made by the same outfit). We both prefer DuckDuckGo as a search engine, though.

[FreeState]

5. Same here

I have to use Chrome for work on occasion but pretty much everything Google I stay away from for the same reasons.

[rlegro]

4. Fine with me

But the feds in that case had better be looking hard at social media giants, too. I'm talking Facebook, for starters.

[FakeNoose]

6. They want an antitrust violator - look at Facebook

Oh my God, Facebook has been allowed to skate for so long. They've sold FB datafiles to anyone who will pay, including our enemies.

[tinrobot]

7. Isn't Chrome mostly open source?

Doesn't add up.

[hunter]

8. Huh? Is there a monopoly here that needs to be broken up?

Mozilla is the only major browser left that's not using the underlying Chromium browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29

The Chromium browser is Open Source. Anyone can use it.

Microsoft Edge and Opera both add features to their Chromium browsers which allow Microsoft and Opera to track users for advertising purposes, just as google does with Chrome. Amazon's Silk browser, the browser on Kindle Fire and other Amazon devices, reports back to Amazon.

There are many browsers based on Chromium that don't report back to anyone at all.

Europe dealt with cookie privacy concerns by requiring the use of those annoying cookie popups. You can choose not to accept a site's cookies, third party or otherwise.

I aggressively filter advertising in my daily life. Most days I don't see any advertising that moves or makes sound. I have uBlock Origin installed on my browsers, and don't watch any advertising supported television.

I accept a limited amount of advertising on web sites I regularly visit if they don't have an option to pay to make the ads go away.

Mostly I visit technical sites with tightly focused unobtrusive advertising. DU is my only "social media" site.

For now it's still possible to take control of your internet exposure. You don't have to let Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or any other corporate or government entity get inside your head.

[Sgent]

9. Yea

I'm not sure that breaking up chrome accomplishes anything. That said, there is an argument that Google is/has used Chrome to solidify its hold on the browser landscape. Microsoft to a large part abandoned an independent Edge due to intentional Youtube compatibility issues, and AMP for some reason upsets a portion of the internet community.

Firefox is a workable model, but even it relies 90%+ on Google for funding, so I don't know how well they can independently resist new web standards.

[hunter]

10. AMP -- Accelerated Mobile Pages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages

As announced by AMP's tech lead Malte at AMP Conf '19, AMP is now just AMP, and does not stand for Accelerated Mobile Pages anymore



Tim Berners-Lee's Solid (a web decentralization project) addresses many many privacy concerns about the modern internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_%28web_decentralization_project%29

Nobody expected the World Wide Web would evolve the way it did, especially Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented it.

Two decades after Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, he outlined the design issues of what later became the Solid project in drafts he wrote for the World Wide Web Consortium. Berners-Lee became increasingly dismayed at seeing his invention being abused, such as when Russian hackers interfered with the 2016 US elections, when the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal became public, when Facebook in 2012 conducted psychological experiments on nearly 700,000 users in secret, and when Google and Amazon applied for patents on devices that listen for emotional changes in human voices.

https://solidproject.org/