Same way it worked in the past with monopolies like Ma Bell?
Those teams can keep working on Chrome, they'll just have to fall under some new kind of separate Chrome Inc. structure instead of under Google Inc., and Google will have to sell most of its shares of Chrome Inc. to third parties.
Splitting off Chrome really isn't the problem. Making the new Chrome Inc. profitable without accepting bribes from big tech, on the other hand...
Yes, that's sort of the problem. An independent Chrome probably wouldn't be profitable. This is essentially just forcing Google to fire the Chrome developers.
I love how people in this thread just unilaterally declare and accept as fact that you can't possibly turn the monopolistic browser and browser engine powering millions of devices and with billions of users into a profitable business. Aim low I guess?
So please enlighten us, how will someone make money from the free product that is free and no one pays for because it is free?
Selling user browser data obviously won't fly (and note that Google has never explicitly nor directly sold user's browsing data as far as I know, but they do have a huge ad network that utilises cookies...), so what's the plan? Put ads in the browser? "Premium" features?
The only thing I can think of is highjacking links to Amazon et al to insert referral codes en masse, or selling links/ads on new tab pages.
All of these are fine examples of how a not-Google Chrome could make money. They could even get paid by Microsoft or some other not-Google search for that traffic.
This isn't hard unless you're trying to make it hard to convince us all we should just give up and let Google continue running our online lives through monopolization.
Because all of that is super-shady privacy-invading and foisting ads and monetisation in places where it wasn't before. Enshitification at its most user-hostile. How is that a positive to users?
Sounds to me that taking chrome away from Google will be a net-negative for the users.
Can you change the chromium license so that rebranding/embedding/electron usage is now paid. Embedding is now a paid feature starting with 10000 installations. You can make selenium paid after certain scale.
The details could be worked out. The idea is to make big corporations pay while keeping it free for users.
Short term no. Langer term they would use it to leverage other things like Google does. Maybe not advertising, although they do seem to be leaning on that now with ads in software.
Yeah, I could imagine Microsoft making a bid. To people who don't follow tech product ownership, "Windows comes with Chrome instead of Edge" would be good PR and it could basically be Edge minus the rebranding.
Thinking about what companies have the adtech infrastructure to buy Chrome and make enough money the justify a bid high enough than Google just shutting it down: Microsoft, Meta/Facebook, Bytedance?
I don't see a real need for Chrome. The stuff they've done to break Adblocking makes it pretty much a dead project today. Web browser development should be open source and not for profit. There is a fair argument that it has been because of Google's funding. There's a strong argument that Chrome has existed to further Google's business and at a minimum protect it's business and ensure third parties didn't hijack all of their PPC revenue in the early days.
It is easy to foresee an outcome here where someone politically connected gets a hold of Chrome and does a lot of crap they shouldn't. The worst case outcome is unrelated to any of this, and something where we end up with government mandated garbage in a web browser. It is very possible that DRM and biometric age verification, and who the fuck knows what else thanks to AI, could be required either by the US or EU, and kill the open source web browser. That's worse than anything Google did.
Of course they could. They could just cancel Chrome, shut the whole browser down and reassign all the staff, and the DOJ would be fine with that. Cancelling it, or selling while keeping 100% of the employees are in no way counter to the proposed remedies.
Those teams can keep working on Chrome, they'll just have to fall under some new kind of separate Chrome Inc. structure instead of under Google Inc., and Google will have to sell most of its shares of Chrome Inc. to third parties.
Splitting off Chrome really isn't the problem. Making the new Chrome Inc. profitable without accepting bribes from big tech, on the other hand...