https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/19/us-doj-sell-chrome-browser-ai-android
US justice department plans to push Google to sell off Chrome browser
[...] The DoJ will reportedly push for Google, which is owned by Alphabet, to sell the browser and also ask a judge to require new measures related to artificial intelligence as well as its Android smartphone operating system, according to Bloomberg.
Competition officials, along with a number of US states that have joined the case against the Silicon Valley company, also plan to recommend that the federal judge Amit Mehta imposes data licensing requirements.
Google has said it will challenge any case by the DoJ and said the proposals marked an "overreach" by the government that would harm consumers.
It didn't go their way a few decades ago when they wanted to split or force Microsoft to split or part with some aspects of the company. Any reason to think they'll do better this time around?
According to Bloomberg they are tossing around the value of $20 billion. Who has that to spare for Chrome? That isn't already more or less a monopoly in and by themselves? One evil is as good/bad as the next evil.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 22, @05:54AM (2 children)
They sell chrome, and the new purchaser, having to justify the price, will sell all the juicy telemetry data. Especially to Goggle. (Apple, too. NSA. Advertising houses. FBI. The highest bidder. Every bidder.)
They'll host the telemetry-collection servers on GCloud. For stability reasons.
A net positive for "competition" - where what they're competing for is everything about you. It'll be a privacy scandal, including every single website you ever visit, when, for how long, when you're home, when you're using the internet, when you're on your phone, employers will be able to buy data on when you're surfing the web on your personal phone vs working, etc.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Saturday November 23, @05:27PM (1 child)
google already does that now.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 25, @05:23PM
Yes, but right now Google owns Chrome, and once google no longer owns Chrome, it will be perfectly okay to do this where right now it is a horrible thing that Google is doing.
Satin worshipers are obsessed with high thread counts because they have so many daemons.