Selling might not make business sense for Google or for Chrome, but it makes a ton of sense for the American public. Google is using Chrome to benefit advertisers, data brokers, and surveillance over users. Exhibit: the manifest v2 / Ublock Origin saga. And this is huge because so many other browsers use Chromium or its engine under the hood. Google can also use Chrome to push user-unfriendly web standards or de-facto standards.
Of course, this doesn't appear that related to the DOJ's reasoning.
The problem is that it doesn't make business sense for anybody else to buy Chrome. Bare in mind that 99% of Chrome is the free Chromium open source project, so you're not buying any sort of technological asset. You're just buying a big pre-existing user base, which would be extremely difficult to monetize without making the product much worse, although I'm sure Microsoft or Facebook would be happy to give that a go. It certainly wouldn't make any sense to buy it without a sprawling advertisement business or some major conflicts of interest. But what's the point of selling it to someone else like that?
It's easy to say "just sell it" without thinking about the actual implications, but you're basically talking about destroying it. Maybe that's the point, but we should at least be honest about it.
Yeah, Chrome is "Google-flavored Chromium", just as Edge is "Microsoft-flavored Chromium."
If (say) Meta bought Edge, then they'd get the userbase and the trademark, but the product seems pointless. Why would Meta want a browser whose killer features are integrations with Bing and Office 365? If Meta wanted a browser, they'd make a "Meta-flavored Chromium."
I'm assuming this is the point - say "just sell it" to satisfy anti-monopolists, while knowing no one will buy it for any reasonable price to satisfy monopolists. Political points across the board with no consequence, why not?
The right answer is to nationalize it. Set up some sort of independent non-profit steering committee, and maybe redirect some of the massive savings Elon has pulled out of his ass to fund the actual core development. That solves the "who spends $1b per year on development if not an adtech" problem. If the US was a functioning state right now, I might suggest making it an international organization to encourage buy in from developers and backers outside our borders.
Browsers are one of the most critical pieces of modern software infrastructure, both from a security-footprint perspective and as a vehicle for (mis-)information delivery, so maybe they're too important for ANY commercial entity to use them as a bludgeon to for their agenda.
If they no longer control the core project, then Google (or Microsoft) have a much harder job doing self-serving stuff. They could nuke Manifest v2 in THEIR Chromium derivative, but core Chromium isn't going to give it up-- the Operas and Vivaldis of the world don't have to spend their limited resources trying to unwind the change to keep a desired feature.
> The problem is that it doesn't make business sense for anybody else to buy Chrome
I don't see why divesting it necessarily means selling it to another company. Google could create a non-profit like Mozilla, or a for profit and float it as its own business.
If Google controls the spin-off, then the problem is not resolved. The whole point is that the government doesn't want Google to control it. And if Google does not control it, then who does? The judge?
There are a lot of seemingly simple "solutions" to this problem that just don't hold up under a modicum of scrutiny.
Mozilla already exists, and it behaves as a non-profit arm of Google. If you created another non-profit it would do the same unless it was banned from receiving money from search engines (but then it would have no money.)
I fear the US government more than I fear Google. At least Google will lose power at one point. The government may fall into wrong hands. Which is exactly why the Reps are trying to defund and dismantle half of its functions.
Of course, this doesn't appear that related to the DOJ's reasoning.