Google is offering a far more pared-down solution to the court’s ruling that it illegally monopolized search
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!”
They can keep chrome if they open source everything and remove all tracking, telemetry, and calling home of any sort, artificial crippling of addons via manifestV3, stop blocking blockers, stop injecting ads, stop breaking APIs, stop asynchronous and default DNS, stop forcing safebrowsing (URL monitoring).
What else have I missed?
I’m guessing they would not be interested in keeping Chrome under those conditions. Those are all things that give them leverage, which is the reason they need to split
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.
no.
FFS the Chrome thing is nothing even. Who would even want it?
it’s a huge deal for google. they control the browser used by the vast majority of users, and the engine behind the one (such as edge, opera, vivaldi, etc) used by still more. they rely on those users to see and interact with ads to make money.
besides the obvious–driving traffic to their web properties that have their ads; they get to siphon off all that sweet user data which makes their ads ‘more valuable’, and control addon functionality and restrictions as well as the primary ‘marketplace’ where those addons come from. their ultimate goal of killing off ad blockers completely, the limits mv3 puts on adblockers is just the next step in that direction.
should a third-party acquire control over chrome’s development, mv3 gets shredded. restrictions and limitations on adblockers get scaled-back or reverted outright.
All good points, but even without Chrome they became one of the biggest companies in the history of Earth. Even without Chrome they’ll still have Android and will undoubtedly spit out a Chromev2 browser experience that suckers will flock to - and even without Chrome they’ll still likely control all of that search traffic.
Hey if it kills their fingerprinting plans, I’m all for it, but are they going to be prevented from developing a browser? That’s like not being allowed to develop a car. Which - again, fine by me, but still unlikely.
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?
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.