Note: Original report by Bloomberg, article by Reuters proxied by Neuters to bypass paywall.

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    46 minutes ago

    They can just wait it out until it becomes the corpo-friendly Dept. of Injustice on Jan. 20th.

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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    2 hours ago

    How do you force someone to sell something thats open source?

    Can the government please force me to sell my open source software too? If they could be my sales department, I’d love that. Pretty please.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Better hurry, Trump’s rubber stamp DOJ will kill this faster than a cop encountering a dog.

  • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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    7 hours ago

    And whoever buys it won’t also have some kind of ulterior motive? Chrome isn’t likely to be a money-maker on its own. If it were, Firefox would have less trouble staying afloat. Anyone who buys Chrome most likely will have plans for it that are no more in the end-user’s best interest than Google’s.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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      6 hours ago

      It’s not about dispelling any ulterior motive. The idea of anti-monopoly enforcement actions is that if the “business ecosystem” is good and healthy, then other companies who don’t own Chrome will be able to compete with whoever owns Chrome, giving the consumer choice that people who like the free market say will reduce consumer exploitation. (If you can’t tell from my tone, I am dubious, at best, of this logic)

      • SquatDingloid@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Yeah any company controlled by the rich will act immorally

        We can at least make sure it’s multiple companies who will fight each other instead of one supreme leader megacorp

  • normalexit@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    This seems like a sensible consumer protection to not let the ad company control the biggest web browser. I won’t hold my breath, but I’m glad they are trying something.

    AWS should also be split from Amazon.

    • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Why force one company to sell off their browser? Shouldn’t MS have to sell Edge and Apple sell Safari?

      • kiagam@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Microsoft having IE/Edge as the default browser has already cost them in the past. I don’t think Apple faced anything with Safari.

        The problem today with chrome is how prevalent it is and how that influences the main product of the internet (advertising), which happens to be Google’s mais product too. Apple can at least make the argument that they make their money with the hardware, not the browser.

        Either way, I think all OS should at least give you a list of browsers on first use to choose from.

        • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Either way, I think all OS should at least give you a list of browsers on first use to choose from.

          I like this idea if only because it means I don’t have the default web browser hanging around only ever having been used to download another web browser.

    • Joker@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      10 hours ago

      What Lemmy client do you use?

      I am asking because it caught my attention that you didn’t upvote your own comment.

      Also, funny reference 😂

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        10 hours ago

        The Lemmy web client, same as Reddit, allows you to de-upvote your posts.
        It feels weird to upvote your own post anyway and I don’t do so unless I am asking for help and want it seen more, urgently.

        • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          That is so odd, if you dont think what you are saying is relevant or necessary why say it?

          Your conscientiousness will be lost in a sea of others self importance, at least level the playing field and support yourself.

          • ulterno@programming.dev
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            9 hours ago

            if you dont think what you are saying is relevant or necessary why say it?

            If I worried about necessity, I would probably not have a Lemmy account.

            level the playing field

            I’m not playing dependent upon others, just upon my own ideals. I feel like an upvote needs to mean something. In my case, it means, I need more people to see it, for me.
            In most cases, the feeling behind my posts/comments are: If someone sees it, good, have fun.

            • Anas@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              Your own upvote on your own comment doesn’t mean anything, because every single comment starts with one upvote by default, not zero. All you’re doing is moving your comments below everyone else’s.

              • ulterno@programming.dev
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                6 hours ago

                Your own upvote on your own comment doesn’t mean anything

                Neither do words, or little magnetic particles lain down nicely on a polymer disc, until people decide they mean something.

                • Anas@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  I don’t think anybody decided that an upvote count of 1 means anything.

  • Scrollone@feddit.it
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    10 hours ago

    It will never happen. But it would be a good thing for the openness of the web. More Firefox, less Chrome.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      7 hours ago

      Yep.

      Tech companies have extreme “Fuck You” money. They have learned a lot from the past two decades of Antitrust acts.

      That politician is either going to quickly change their mind with some bribes, or watch their entire life disappear with an army of lawyers or paid off peers shutting them down.

    • tomatoely@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      Wouldn’t it put Firefox on a pickle? Say Chrome gets bought out of Google’s hands, would they still bother to pay half a billion to Firefox to stay as the default search engine? Could Firefox survive being financially independent?

  • Rogue@feddit.uk
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    21 hours ago

    Google will bribe trump and this’ll be undone immediately

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Google is such a good company, one the best. Everybody says it. I was just talking to John Google the other day, and he tells me, no really he did, he tells me we’re going to do amazing things together. Oogles of googles. That’s what we’ll sell. Everybody will know about google by this time next year. It’s true.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        You forgot the unrelated rant in the middle about toasters being too dark these days or some shit.

        • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          11 hours ago

          And a series of words that sounds kinda like a complex sentence when you listen to it, but actually means nothing whatsoever

          And he says to me… a very smart guy, Mark, he’s really doing… he’s really got to show… when he does things he really does them, you know, like he really does, very impressive, very modern

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          13 hours ago

          He also didn’t say his name three times in 10 seconds. Then sort of fade off and vaguely look off into the distance.

          They said to me Donald, Donald, they said Donald, they do amazing things, real bigly things, my father, my father, said to me Donald, they do big things Google land. Really good things… Yeah… Big things…

    • 0xb@lemm.ee
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      18 hours ago

      That would be the logical thing according to common sense and probably according to pichai a few weeks ago, but trump just nominated an anti big tech and musk friend to the FCC. musk is behind almost everybody in ai and autonomous cars so he’ll definitely push to hamper all competitors.

      Sure, we don’t know how far would they go or how long will musk keep having white house influence and I personally think breaking up google is now off the table, but I don’t think they will get off the hook too easily.

      So surely a very big bribe.

  • barkingspiders@infosec.pub
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    22 hours ago

    Lit. It’s a good ask although it’s not clear what separation means here. Not going to hold my breath, the big corpos seem to usually win these kind of games.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        It’s like they’re a company pretending to be another company, disguised as another company. Tropic Thunder all the way down.

    • Arkouda@lemmy.ca
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      22 hours ago

      Chrome is now owned by a company, owned by a company, owned by another company, that is owned by Google.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        And even in the case where there is actual separation, and competition, it will only be temporary!

        see history of telco consolidation after a monopoly breakup in 1984

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          If they split Google, MS, Apple, Meta and Amazon all simultaneously, with some condition for the splinters to not merge back, and that contaminating the results of their allowed mergers, there may be good outcomes.

          Or there may not. It’s about people, not laws, after all.

            • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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              2 hours ago

              Thanks to this thread TIL it was one of the few serious competitors to ATTs monopoly.

              Southern Pacific Communications and introduction of Sprint

              Sprint also traces its roots back to the Southern Pacific Railroad (SPR), which was founded in the 1860s as a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Company (SPC). The company operated thousands of miles of track as well as telegraph wire that ran along those tracks. In the early 1970s, the company began looking for ways to use its existing communications lines for long-distance calling. This division of the business was named the Southern Pacific Communications Company. By the mid 1970s, SPC was beginning to take business away from AT&T, which held a monopoly at the time. A number of lawsuits between SPC and AT&T took place throughout the 1970s; the majority were decided in favor of increased competition.Prior attempts at offering long-distance voice services had not been approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), although a fax service (called SpeedFAX) was permitted..

              In the mid-1970s, SPC held a contest to select a new name for the company. The winning entry was “SPRINT”, an acronym for “Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony”.

  • vortexal@sopuli.xyz
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    19 hours ago

    If this happens, I’d be interested in seeing how this effects ChromeOS. I don’t use it but my mom does.

    Also, if you’re confused as to why ChromeOS would be effected, while it’s based on Gentoo Linux, ChromeOS uses a modified version of Chrome as it’s Desktop Environment.

    • btaf45@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Yes I would like to know what that means for ChromeOS and Chromebooks. If the new “Chrome” company got ChromeOS also that would be huge. But if that is not a requirement Google could just put another Chromium browser in ChromeOS. They could also continue to sell Chromebooks but based on a ChromiumOS fork.

  • tekato@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Yes, regulate the web browsers where you can just download librewolf or brave, but don’t do anything about the criminal ISPs and wireless network service providers.

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
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      5 hours ago

      I know, right? Why deal with Problem X when Problem Y also exists?

      • tekato@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Except you’re not dealing with anything. What do you think happens once Google sells Chrome? They release a new browser a month later, and it will be better than Chrome because nobody has the manpower to develop a web browser at the same speed as Google. This is a waste of time.

        • WildPalmTree@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          I’d assume the ruling would also stipulate that they don’t develop a new browser for X years. Otherwise they could be right back in a day by forking Chromium.

          • tekato@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            So you’re saying a company should be prohibited from developing a product because it might be better than the competition? I don’t think you guys even realize what you’re advocating for.