Probably isn't one. At most, it can be turned into a Firefox like non-profit foundation. Although people generally don't realize that ads (and Google's personalized ad based system), is good for the economy as a whole... Without it, only big companies would be able to reach customers, because only they can afford massive ad spend to hit everyone with their ads. The problem is that the government doesn't understand how anything in the world works... smh.
@@Leto2ndAtreides but that's primarily because search engines stopped indexing anything except the top 10 sites + advertisements. For example, when you try to look anything up, 90% of the results come from Reddit. Why does Google index individual Reddit threads when Reddit has its own search engine? That makes small forums impossible to discover, unless they pay for an ad.
As a firefox user, I am not ashamed to admit, chrome drives the web and (for the most part) in the right direction, hopefully they find a solution to this...
@@igoralmeida9136 no they will not. Firefox existed long before Chrome ever did, and before Google ever paid them. It will continue to exist afterwards. This is the biggest strawman Theo claims in his video. Just because Mozilla's _current_ funding is coming from Google is entirely _because_ of Google's anti-competitive behavior. If Google wasn't putting new untested features in chrome that most standards bodies wouldn't approve of, Firefox (and others) wouldn't need to expend the sheer amount of resources to add those same features to their browsers. And it's exactly WHY Mozilla has that document. Google uses its might to control the web which is a bad thing for everyone.
As a firefox user and extension developer who remembers the days before they took over, I'm excited, and I will happily fork and maintain my own if anyone wants to join me. Things have only gotten increasingly more restrictive on the client side. Anyone remember Tamper Data? I mean come on guys, we're at the point where we can't even have ad blockers anymore. Don't tell me declaritivewebrequest is the same thing but safer or that you like having 90% of your extensions made impossible due to the browser automatically closing your background services whenever it feels like it.
As a firefox user and extension developer who remembers the days before they took over, I'm excited, and I will happily fork and maintain my own if anyone wants to join me. Things have only gotten increasingly more restrictive on the client side. Anyone remember Tamper Data?
Don't tell me DeclaritiveWebRequest is the same thing but safer or that you like having 90% of your extensions made impossible due to the browser automatically closing your background services whenever it feels like it.
It isn't good for the short term but probably great for the long term. Having one company basically dictate the standards of the internet is wild. They might have pushed the web, but currently, any standard has to go through Google. And let's not talk about the time they tried to sneak in a web integrity API. Google is an advertisement company, and the more you use their software, especially their browser, the more information they can get.
Exactly, I don't really like the argument where "Its not making Google money". Yes that's true that directly its not generating revenue, but it is inderictly generating revenue through data collection and hence ads. I don't think Google would of invested so much into chrome/chromium if this wasn't the case. And I still think they will have an incentive to want to work on chromium, if all of their software is already web based. Since as it has been said already, that Google doesn't make money from chrome but from their ads.
I think the problem is that Chrome would just be sold to some other massive company. I don't trust Google, but I trust other massive companies even less.
yeah but won't it take another company as huge as Google to drive innovation at the pace which they can? Any company buying chrome will for $20B 1. will be a huge company 2. will have a huge incentive to buy it, and somehow integrate it for profit or competitive advantage. so won't we just have another big company dictating standards. switching masters. I don't see how this is good for the web. If they want to control google's monopoly they should go after the default distribution deals. Google doesn't make money off chrome. even in 2009 when chrome didn't exist and IE was the default browser and bing the default search engine on IE, 90% of users still switched to google search. Today no PC ships with chrome, they ship with edge and bing search as defaults, 70% of computers sold in the US market, but we use edge to download google chrome or change the default browser to google. You could argue google search has a monopoly because of default distribution deals ie apple devices and android. This makes up about 50% of the USA market. But the rest (40%) uses google intentionally ie PC users. So people use google because they think its a superior product. The target should be these deals and not chrome. Google could dump chrome tomorrow and the only thing it will kill is I guess chrome, firefox, chromium e.t.c Peope will still use google search
Can agree with data collecting and chrome Android not being directly revenue generator but this is not how they should tackle it by destroying it as a whole
You are so very wrong on the subject. Since Google depends on the web being a good platform, they can just fund and contribute to the entity maintaining Chromium. For the consumer and developers nothing would change aside from Google not being able to single-handedly push controversial decisions like removing support for MV3. Also, I’ve been using Firefox (and Safari) primarily for more then a decade now, I really don’t get the hate
0:30 - No it doesn't, Internet survived Netscape and Internet Explorer, it move away from Applets and SWF... Chromium is the base of almost all browsers on market. The Internet will move on, as will Chromium... I hope this can ease the grasp that Alphabet has around the Internet's neck!
just watch video damit He literally said web existed before but chrome made revolution and using web useful as it is today literally good amount of apps which you don't even know uses chrome steam uses chrome without chrome better part of steam wouldn't work and that's just steam lot of other apps and services uses chrome too
Chrome is the most popular browser _because_ of Google's anti competitive behavior. Google has two faces, the open source contributor and the anti competitive monster. Google selling Chrome _does not stop them from contributing to Chromium_. So if all they cared about was making the web faster then they have no reason to own Chrome. They can continue to develop on it and make stuff work better. But that's not their goal. They make money off of harvesting users' data, hence the desire to maintain control over Chrome. Also your view of Firefox makes it completely clear why you want Chrome to not be sold. All your toy browsers completely depend on it. The way Mozilla is doing it is the right way, don't just implement stuff because Google wants it. Literally Google implements more and more features that completely lock users into Chrome, while making alternative browsers (non-chromium) even harder to maintain. Man, Google has got you by the balls. It doesn't really matter if you've disagreed with Google in the past, it's clear that you aren't actually looking at how Chrome _became_ a monopoly and how they maintain that hold.
"this isn't just take this from Google, hurt google take chrome away, this is an attempt to destroy the web" absolutely not. Mozilla was doing just fine before Chrome came along. What is hurting FF now is Google pumping out new web features faster than any other browser can keep up, thus making Chrome the most popular browser. You want the latest features, you're _forced_ to use Chrome. If Chrome goes away, then we go back to actual proper releases where it's _discussed_ what features to add to the web rather than Google pumping out stuff willy nilly. Browser creators can keep up and they aren't always one step (or a thousand) behind Chrome at every moment. Firefox will not die from Chrome being sold (sold dude, it's not going to stop existing) because Firefox existed long before Chrome ever did. Same with every other browser creator.
What are you talking about? Of course no company purely cares about open-source contributions. They care about it because it incentivizes their proprietary product (by driving developer education and overall talent of the world towards improving it). This _would stop them from contributing to Chromium_ in the same capacity, as they no longer benefit from improving the browser without reaping its benefits.
I do agree with your second paragraph though. Chrome pushing the web forward, also means it has a huge say in what the *standard* is. So it's good Firefox hasn't handcuffed themselves into being a purely compliant browser and breaking compatibility where necessary.
Yeah right, "Mozilla is doing it the right way". They spend most of the money they get from their Google overlords on anything BUT Firefox. A whole load of political nonsense. Mozilla is an utter failure of an organisation, they did nothing to become sustainable. The corporation that runs advertisement business, harvests user data and pretends to be not-for-profit.
@@VivekYadav-ds8oz Why would they not benefit from contributing to Chromium? They currently do, then package their own custom browser with Google specific features in it. If it was exactly what Theo said and they just wanted to improve the web for everyone then they would have no problem contributing to just Chromium and not owning Chrome anymore. Clearly they gain something explicit from Chrome and not Chromium. User data. Also it seems like my second comment was deleted, either by UA-cam's algorithm or Theo, but it was about how Theo states that FF would be destroyed if Chrome was sold, which is just complete nonsense. FF existed before Chrome and it will continue to exist without Chrome. Chrome is pushing web standards that force other browser creators to keep up and so of course it costs millions and millions of dollars to try and keep up, essentially leaving everyone 2 steps behind at all times. If Chrome stopped doing that, Mozilla wouldn't need the money it does today to actually build a decent browser.
the web shouldn't depend on google. i think this would likely make it worse in the short term, but absolutely better in the long term without google's monopoly
Nah. It’s time for a change. The issues that arise will be programming issues that are totally solvable. Google demonstrated bad faith by nerfing search for profits. They do not have consumer interests at heart.
They demonstrated worse faith when they tried to DRM the web (aka WebIntegrity) and when they nerfed the majority of actually useful extensions with MV3 in a way that every chromium based browser had to comply with
This is great news in the long term. The point is to break the monopoly, the data monopoly, one company should not have this much control over world's data. This will lead to a more decentralised web.
Isn't the whole point that Google IS earning through ads throughout the entire web, and that Chrome and their influence on the web to benefit their ad business (e.g. manifest v3 and privacy sandbox), rather than the search engine argument? The search engine argument is purely about google paying the competitors for default search engine use, which is monopolistic.
There is nothing in the video which can take more than 10min to edit 😅. He is late because he is in his parents house and he's not aware of it.@@ego-lay_atman-bay
Ok Theo - different proposal 1. Force them to let go of Android and spin that off into a foundation founded by an industry coalition so Google can keep that thing alive alongside Samsung, OnePlus and all the other Smartphone Vendors that run Android 2. Force them to let go of Chromium and spin that off into a foundation founded by an industry coalition The point of this is not that google is not the single entity dictating the way forward for the web and mobile any longer Also "Chill our investment in artificial intelligence" is probably the best reason they could give for why this is actually a good thing
chromium would be perfect as a community coalition ngl 99% of the chromium-pumped bs is really google-pumped bs that in some cases even microsoft objected to. and nowadays there's just too many stakeholders in that browser. the linux foundation or similar would be a far better place for it ngl
Chrome should be lead as a nonprofit/public service project. Google is a monopoly, and governments around the world world have taken action towards Google and similar tech giants. However, US Government just washed their hands off of responsibilty and did the most nearsighted action.
Someone in the DOJ is not a fan of web components Edit: but you are wrong about google’s biz model. The ads are valuable specifically because google tracks peoples’ search habits and builds profiles on them, which can be used to better micro target ads and provide intel on consumers to their ad customers.
"Google must have all the power, why else would they give us all this free stuff?" is a kiss-ass attitude. Authoritarianism can lead to some positive outcomes, it's not uncommon for people to support it. Still, I'd rather have a more equal playing field with less consolidated power at the expense of a messier web.
Google has definitely has a monopoly on the browser space, it's not a good thing. Sill sticking to Firefox. It's not quite as fast but way more flexible. And with a few changes you get your privacy back. Forcing them to sell it is a bit radical, but the web was fine before chome, it will be fine after.
That would be same as today they will be the in charge and have same control as of now I don't see hiding them under different name. We can keep it as right now
Like I could see the chromium based browsers just forking chromium, maybe set up a "chromium forum" similar to how we have the vesa foundation and USB forum. A group that maintains the open source project with reps from multiple companies that oversee the development
I do agree that what DoJ proposes is an overreach. And I think it's why it will not pass/continue. However, I totally disagree that it will kill the web or anything remotely close to that. There's plenty of innovation done outside Google. If Chrome disappears today, sites and products won't break, as Chromium can serve them with absolutely no issues. If Chrome disappears today, we won't be stuck in the current version of the web, it will continue to be improved. Maybe slower, but we'll be absolutely fine. I hate this type of argument so much. That if we don't sell our soul to the devil (figuratively) then we won't be able to do anything. Ok, maybe 10 or 15 years ago it might've been closer to the truth, but even then I don't agree that we wouldn't have have the benefits of the modern day browsers without Chrome. It would've taken longer most likely. But nobody would've died because of that. But it's even less of a concern now, with thousands of non-google engineers contributing to web standards and browser code. I wouold also not discount Firefox so quickly. It's true that most of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google, but a lot of the revenue is wasted on useless projects (usually DEI stuff) and on the woke staff itself that managed to get the leadership. Firefox developers don't get a lot of cash. Not getting the money from Google might actually be better for Mozilla and Firefox, as it might be freed from the woke management and steered back into competence and relevancy by engineers and ACTUAL free speech activists. And if they make a dedicated Firefox-devs only donation category, I'm sure that there will be people chiming in (myself included), enough to at least keep the current funding the developers get.
I like how you completely ignored the fact how Google is shaping chrome to be more of an ad serving platform. No blockers towards fingerprinting, pushing attestation. Chrome has majority of market share in browser which is already a bad thing on top of that Google who's major revenue source is advertisement what can go wrong?
This same legal argument is what got Microsoft in hot trouble with Microsoft Explorer. Microsoft Explorer was seen as monopolistic because it came packaged with Windows.
"This is not clickbait" Yes it is. Even in the worst case, Chromium will be forked and we'll just have it right alongside firefox and safari like we always have.
Breaking a monopoly is not a bad thing, there are issues that will arise yes, but that is fault to a dependency to said monopoly lasting too long, the issues will be solved and browsers need some actual competition, and no chromium skins doesnt count
I think the problem we are at with the web is that its so integrated into our lives its like a public service or resource. Your local library or park or roads or policing is usually maintained by the government and these companies are basically filling this place for the government. We can't afford to have the internet fragmented just like it wouldn't be sustainable with real world services. Monopolies have to exist but left to become one will eventually work in their own interests against consumers. I don't think there is a good solution either way, things just need to be nudged in the right direction.
You say that Firefox is a garbage browser that doesn't want to support web standards because apparently they don't like some of them. Well surprise surprise, the same exact same thing can be said about Chrome. Remember this thing called jpeg-xl, how do you justify Chrome refusing to support it?
Call it whatever you want to call it. The point here is that they can arbitrarily decide not to support a given technology even if it is superior, and just pretend it's not a big deal, even after there was a big push from the industry. Do you think they would've pushed MV3 on everyone or choose to ignore JPEG-XL if for example Chrome had 10% market share. I'm sure you're smart enough to know the answer to this question.
@@dechobarcano, he had exactly a point. One thing is to not support things outside of standard, and completely different is fighting against standards. First is secondary, while second is primary support. Because web relies on standards, otherwise it becomes a mess. [You know issue with why jpeg-xl is not a standard? Because of how resource intensive it is to decode.] UPD: my bad, hadn't researched too much. 70% decode speed of JPEG is pretty much fine. But it still is not a standard. Not even close. Also, afaik AVIF is also not standard. But, i can poke you back in other way. I can play back H.265 video in Chrome if there is system level codec installed. But i cannot do that in Firefox, because guess what? They don't support H.265 at all. Not even with external codecs. And, mind you, H.265 is way more popular than jpeg-xl afaik. And yet Mozilla declines to implement even basic compatability. So much for your competition stimulating implementation of additional features as argument.
@@DimkaTsv There is so much wrong and misinformation in your comment that I'm not even sure it's worth debating here. "As with its predecessor AVC, software distributors that implement HEVC in products must pay a price per distributed copy.[i] While this licensing model is manageable for paid software, it is an obstacle to most free and open-source software, which is meant to be freely distributable." "Sequential JPEG is unbeatable in terms of decode speed - not surprising for a codec that was designed in the 1980s. Progressive JPEG (e.g. as produced by mozjpeg and default jpegli) is somewhat slower to decode, but still fast enough to load any reasonably-sized image in the blink of an eye. JPEG XL is somewhere in between those two." Took me less than 5 min of research to find this information.
@@dechobarca Whether something is "superior" is subjective. There's no perfect solution to everything, and there are plenty of reasons to not support JPEG-XL; for example that the specification wasn't even finalized until 2022. Despite this, the Chromium team at Google were the initial push for WebKit team to add support for JPEG-XL in the first place, as they were already implementing the reference material of JPEG-XL into Chromium, even before the standard was finalized. They didn't implement it into Chrome, as 1) there were no incentive for them to do so at the time, given only a minority said they wanted it, but there was little to no demand, and 2) The speeds were marginally worse compared to WebP, and there were no hardware accelerated support for the format to benefit from video codecs, natively supported by a lot of hardware. So the decision was made to remove support until enough guarantees could be made to qualify the required support and maintenance. Apple is in a unique position in that they own platforms and hardware that can be utilized to provide a better user experience; they are also having real use-cases, like their website, which are very image-heavy and _could_ benefit from the format (but yet still doesn't). So it makes more sense for Apple to push support into their browsers.
The lawsuit isn't what we got from Chrome, it's what it took from others - fair competition and a chance to do business. And I'm a Chrome-only user ever since it came out.
I hear a lot of people say Theo is a clown and a bit of a grifter. That wasn't my view and I thought his critics were harsh but when he says Chrome's demise is a 'death sentence for the web' and forcing its sale is 'terrifying' I think they might have a point. Unsubscribed.
This process is certainly highly politicized. Both Android and Chromium are widely used and improved upon in other countries like China, which gave them an upper hand in joining the competition in software and electronics markets. The Linux Foundation kicked out Russian maintainers recently to be compliant with one particular party. The USA now is changing its strategy from globalism to mercantilism, and it seems that open source as we know it will change because of it. Chromium will probably stop development, as well as Firefox may lose its financing. Thus "closed apps market" seems to be not a bug but a goal and a feature of this process. If this speculation is correct, we will see that big companies will cease their advances in critical open-source software.
It's bigger than a web engine. They should be descentralized and fully open source in order to avoid one company pushing where they need to push their browser to be able to force their own services to work well only on their engine so they can still gather all your data and target you with more ads.
Chrome is just new IE. It “drives” too fast and adding more and more inconsistencies from other browsers’ implementation. The more and more I hear about “this doesnt work in chrome” or “this only works in chrome”… Im glad something is happening, It does not deserve the trust it has gotten up to this time.
The gov is soo wrong in this regard. This is not a problem at all. The people have already chosen, and Chrome is FREE! This is really gov members trying to look cool and other haters trying to knock them off the top spot. The gov needs to leave Chorme alone and focus on why public education and health care sucks.
I disagree with the sentiment in this video, because if we go "Google cant be broken up because it would be bad for the internet", then thats literally the definition of a monopoly and Google would be "too big to fail". It would be America's version of Samsung.
L take. I have 0 ability to feel any pity for Google, and yeah, with the size and market share of chrome and android, it's impossible for there to be competition. Competition is objectively a good thing in any market. So if the doj's decision causes a bit of a shake up, ruffle the market a bit to make things actually competitive again, I think the average Joe could benefit more from that than from the status quo.
I personally don't care that much about the web. The most interesting stuff happens in local apps anyway because of performance requirements. (Games are the best example of this)
Thanks for the sharing this news. I had no idea Google was open sourced for other web browsers and funding Firefox, wow! It's the same for and4oid, so Many companies like Samsung use Android and Taylor it to their needs. I didn't realize how big of an impact Google has on the web and Android
Break up the monopoly. Divesting Chrome and Android are necessary to stop Google from using the current power it holds to push out more competition from the web. Chromium and other Google open source projects are really a defense, and for Android, a legacy choice that they would likely not make again should they have had the chance to decide from the start. What will happen to Mozilla/Firefox is worrying, but at the end of the day, someone will step in to provide the need. Hopefully someone, or many someones, that have the public's best interests at heart -- because you average consumer really has no idea how data collection works.
@@Malix_Labs Mostly -- I am not sure Apple is as much of a concern on the privacy fronts, though, and in a web context they are not as monolithic as Google. But they still have heavy monopoly-esque powers (remember, Google has been convicted of plotting themselves into a monopoly, Apple has not) Apple has still done very sketchy monopolistic things, like enforcing Lightning connectors on their devices and creating a monopoly on their app market. They just have a tendency to be more easily strong-armed out of those practices by political forces like the EU
It's really not. The web is terrible and practically dead as is, in large part thanks to Google. It might hurt the comfort usage of web for a regular consumer for a while, but just a couple of years tops. This would be healthy overall in the long run, and I really hope "the new chrome" won't eat 95% percent of market share again
The web runs on V8, Iḿ mostly concerned about that. The problem is ¨Designed to run on MS IE 6.0¨ became ¨Works on Chrome¨. Since Opera and Edge became a skin on Chromium Chrome is becoming a bad anchor. Would like to see more advancement on Servo, IMO. A choice screen was the solution when MSIE was dominant, Microsoft was forced to add a ¨choose a default browser¨. So there is *precedent in the law* , what are you talking about?
You're conflating so many things. Servo is not a JavaScript engine-it's a rendering engine, nothing more, nothing less. V8 is not tied any one browser, let alone Chrome. It's a general purpose JavaScript engine, used by other runtimes and is completely separate from the Chromium source code.
@@dealloc Well, I mean V8 is financially dependent on Google. There can be little way to monetize it, but the world depends on it (most runtimes bind to it) since no one else seems to be smart enough to produce anything close. The point is this is great for the speed of development of V8 (we get a lot of new features) but monocultures are generally bad. Whoever finances Chrome and Chromium will have to bear the burden of V8 too, *I guess* . I hope that makes more sense. Would you see V8 being handed off to a ¨Linux Foundation¨ or Apache? Well point taken on Servo too. I guess the better comparison would have been Spidermonkey + (Servo or FF or smth else).
If the competition Products aren't better, we simply stick to Google. So wtf do they want? If they aren't better, they will never be chosen at all. Damn, ppl get crazy with all Inflation, first Matt, now Goverment against Google? LET ME TAKE MY POPCORN!
SAAS's success has been mostly due to Chrome. Silicon Valley produced 300+ unicorns during the past 20 years. Over the past 20 years Silicon Valley has mostly been producing SAAS companies. Over 40% of VC fundings have went into SAAS Start-Ups! Without Google pushing the web standards, web platform will stagnate. Without an awesome web platform, people would have to download and install millions of apps on their devices. App makers will be limited by devices capabilities. Without Android, Apple and Microsoft will the write the rules and slow down innovation. Device manufactures will own their customers.
Regulations are just a byproduct of itchiness in a random regulator butt, it is simple as that, no need to argue about how is this a bad thing because it will not change how they act. When the itchiness comes, more regulations.
Google search has gone way downhill. But having to sell chrome is one of the dumbest things ive heard. The people doing this probably dont even know how to make a pdf.
The internet shouldn't be Google or Chrome and that's the issue. Yes, the internet would be (arguable) a worst place without it, but a monopoly isn't better. I don't see how they could force Google to sell Chrome tho, or find anyone who could buy it without making things worst (like allowing meta to buy it)
Chrome needs to be taken from google. Yea it’s going to be hard for the web but it’s already bad with google owning search and owning the browser. I’m tired of people saying this is a bad thing. This needs to happen
The web will be fine. Google doesn't have to own Chrome to contribute to it. Chromium is still open source, as you say. Why assume that Google wouldn't continue Chromium contributions?
The author is wrong. Yes, Google has a vision, and of course there are positive aspects, BUT according to its vision, no one else should make the web better, that's the problem. The problem is that we will never have Google 2 and Google 3 precisely because of the existence of Google 1. We are talking about a monopoly, not about closing Chrome. If Chrome becomes a separate company, the company's revenue will suffer, not the users.
Despite Chrome being annoying in that there are no neat features similar to those that Arc provides, it provides a LOT of stability. Stability makes web development soooooo much easier. Chrome is robust, we just need to look over MDN over what features are supported by different browsers vs Chrome (okay sure Chromium probably pushes these spec the most). Backwards compatibility although making codebases bloated, makes development so much easier - Chromium and Chrome provide that to an extent. On the contrary, not to dunk on LLVM devs, but upgrading LLVM versions is such a damn pain. If Chrome is forced to moved to a buyer with different intents, web development might feel like Ja.. ECMAScript having breaking changes on every minor patch...
Not sure where he says something about it, but the US government prevents them from funding 3rd parties. They still have the incentive, they just aren't allowed to do it.
I feel as though google supporting firefox by giving them real money is t real competition. If i was just getting money to exist, there is no incentive for me to compete, at that point firefox is just there so google can point at them and say, "Hey look, thats our competitor" even though they would do anything to keep the money coming from google.
This is just going to lead to a multiple companies sharing a webstandard. Google by no means is the only reason the web can succeed. This has happened over and over in tech's past. Ad display is only one part of the problem. You're missing the part Chrome is used to collect information for ads. What makes this good is that they're forced to get rid of their ability to collect information which allows targeted advertising. Further, it's best for cybersecurity and development if we stop using the browser like an OS. It shouldn't be an OS plain and simple. To push it to be one is just against performance and the nature of software.
Claiming that Firefox has a specific site to list features they refuse to implement is misleading. What you’re referring to is a specification site that all browsers use to track their position and collaborate with spec authors on whether new proposals make sense. If a proposal is accepted and added to the baseline, Firefox will implement it, sometimes imperfectly, sure, but they do implement it.
and yes the chrome one is better because it tracks way more than just itself, they are the platform moving web forward for sure, but that doesn't mean that other browser are refusing to implement features just because they are bad
Just to correct some comments I saw regarding who will buy a browser that does not generate revenue. That was quite off and kind of like a joke. Chrome generates +46% of google services revenue. Yeah you may argue that Adsense had a big role there, but without chrome adsense has no role there, if someone buys chrome they can implement their own ad revenue stream. None is going to stop using google search engine. I personally believe that nothing will change, just new owners and too much panic around.
I think Theo is focusing too much on the web dev perspective. Here are 3 alternative perspectives on whats happening: - Google is bluffing. Google will be unlikely to disengage from stearing positions as their underlining business comes from the web. They will fight even harder once their network effect is removed (more on that below) that will force them to actually compete. - Companies etc. using arguments like "U.S. tech leadership" is basically saying: "we can't compete without these monopolies". You should then ask, against who? U.S. has by far the biggest startup ecosystem. Draghis EU competiveness report showed a chart where U.S. led startups have over 80% more access to capital than EU nations combined from preseed to Series x. That means that the most likely challengers to Google and other big tech monopolies are U.S. based tech startups. Will EU startups benefit, yes, but most benefit will come to U.S. based startups/enterprises. - The only way you can really remove tech monopolies is by removing the network effect that big tech have gained. In Googles case, Chrome and Android create the demand for Googles services by feeding users to create new Google accounts and by providing data on their behaviour. This then feeds into their search advantage. By removing Chrome and Android, DoJ would effectively force Google to compete for those accounts and data instead of getting them "out of the box". So imagine a world where you use Chrome and Android but instead of having only an option to login with your Google account for backups etc, you could use your Dropbox account as the sync service... or maybe a new service that instead of being "free" you paid 15€/month to not be tracked and it would in theory work as well as the Google account.
Thoe i'm not sure if i should be ashamed or not. but when you said a ad was coming up and i sat here waiting for said ad and for it to never show than remember i don't see ads on youtube ever at all. it's a two plugin system i use on every browser chrome firefox and others that support it. a adblocker and a sponsor blocker it even blocks some self sponsor sections. and will all of this actually effect my cloud gaming program i'm making that's based on well with several prototypes i've not decided but so far i've leaned towards chromium based but i have had more promise with QT's webview system i am not sure if theirs is custom or if it's based on chrome but it works and i don't argue with it's working normally. okay that last bit was a lie i defo argue with it's working sometimes.
While I generally understand the worries, you haven't really addressed the core issues of this situation. I think it's obvious to everybody that Google puts a lot of resources into Chrome and that its success is beneficial to the web at large. This is still a very narrow consideration: if Chrome was not profitable for Google, they would have dropped it. Given that it is profitable for them, it is clearly profit derived from being a monopoly in the browser space. This fact is very problematic: it undermines the core idea of a 'web' and gradually makes the Internet a product made by Google. Also, if no one else can make profit from developing browsers, the economic model of the web is highly flawed. If breaking them up is going to be a massive blow to web development, that is all the more reason to do it now. Eventually it will recover. What alternative do you suggest? Allowing the web to finally degrade into a privately owned environment?
The comment about chromium losing development is a nonissue. Other browsers based on chromium will get more use and funding and can develop chromium further. Google will still have power in TC39 and will contribute, but their position will be way different as they do not have personal interests to hinder competition. Recent requests for standardization have made competition much more difficult.
If a buyer for Chrome could be found, I fear what sort of monetization they would implement to offset the price.
I fear it would be apple / microsoft / amazon / facebook or any other company which will destroy it..
Probably isn't one. At most, it can be turned into a Firefox like non-profit foundation.
Although people generally don't realize that ads (and Google's personalized ad based system), is good for the economy as a whole... Without it, only big companies would be able to reach customers, because only they can afford massive ad spend to hit everyone with their ads.
The problem is that the government doesn't understand how anything in the world works... smh.
@@Leto2ndAtreides but that's primarily because search engines stopped indexing anything except the top 10 sites + advertisements. For example, when you try to look anything up, 90% of the results come from Reddit. Why does Google index individual Reddit threads when Reddit has its own search engine? That makes small forums impossible to discover, unless they pay for an ad.
Why do they need to find a buyer?
As a firefox user, I am not ashamed to admit, chrome drives the web and (for the most part) in the right direction, hopefully they find a solution to this...
also Mozilla will go bankrupt if Google can't pay them anymore
@@igoralmeida9136 no they will not. Firefox existed long before Chrome ever did, and before Google ever paid them. It will continue to exist afterwards. This is the biggest strawman Theo claims in his video. Just because Mozilla's _current_ funding is coming from Google is entirely _because_ of Google's anti-competitive behavior. If Google wasn't putting new untested features in chrome that most standards bodies wouldn't approve of, Firefox (and others) wouldn't need to expend the sheer amount of resources to add those same features to their browsers. And it's exactly WHY Mozilla has that document. Google uses its might to control the web which is a bad thing for everyone.
As a firefox user and extension developer who remembers the days before they took over, I'm excited, and I will happily fork and maintain my own if anyone wants to join me. Things have only gotten increasingly more restrictive on the client side. Anyone remember Tamper Data? I mean come on guys, we're at the point where we can't even have ad blockers anymore. Don't tell me declaritivewebrequest is the same thing but safer or that you like having 90% of your extensions made impossible due to the browser automatically closing your background services whenever it feels like it.
As a firefox user and extension developer who remembers the days before they took over, I'm excited, and I will happily fork and maintain my own if anyone wants to join me. Things have only gotten increasingly more restrictive on the client side. Anyone remember Tamper Data?
Don't tell me DeclaritiveWebRequest is the same thing but safer or that you like having 90% of your extensions made impossible due to the browser automatically closing your background services whenever it feels like it.
here from the future, apple buys chrome and it gets real crazy
It'll either be MS Apple, or Oracle - good luck with Oracle Chrome!
@@gorak9000😂 Oracle: pay-per-view sounds like the right play here..
@@gorak9000 or Google creating a private company to not lose it totally
@everyhandletaken the window just becomes an applet, a security error and stack traces follow...
@@gorak9000 oracle buying chrome would be a disaster
It isn't good for the short term but probably great for the long term. Having one company basically dictate the standards of the internet is wild. They might have pushed the web, but currently, any standard has to go through Google. And let's not talk about the time they tried to sneak in a web integrity API. Google is an advertisement company, and the more you use their software, especially their browser, the more information they can get.
Exactly, I don't really like the argument where "Its not making Google money". Yes that's true that directly its not generating revenue, but it is inderictly generating revenue through data collection and hence ads. I don't think Google would of invested so much into chrome/chromium if this wasn't the case.
And I still think they will have an incentive to want to work on chromium, if all of their software is already web based. Since as it has been said already, that Google doesn't make money from chrome but from their ads.
I think the problem is that Chrome would just be sold to some other massive company. I don't trust Google, but I trust other massive companies even less.
@@CottidaeSEAYeah that is true, I don't really know what company would be able to buy it for 20 billies
yeah but won't it take another company as huge as Google to drive innovation at the pace which they can? Any company buying chrome will for $20B 1. will be a huge company 2. will have a huge incentive to buy it, and somehow integrate it for profit or competitive advantage. so won't we just have another big company dictating standards. switching masters.
I don't see how this is good for the web. If they want to control google's monopoly they should go after the default distribution deals. Google doesn't make money off chrome. even in 2009 when chrome didn't exist and IE was the default browser and bing the default search engine on IE, 90% of users still switched to google search. Today no PC ships with chrome, they ship with edge and bing search as defaults, 70% of computers sold in the US market, but we use edge to download google chrome or change the default browser to google.
You could argue google search has a monopoly because of default distribution deals ie apple devices and android. This makes up about 50% of the USA market. But the rest (40%) uses google intentionally ie PC users. So people use google because they think its a superior product. The target should be these deals and not chrome. Google could dump chrome tomorrow and the only thing it will kill is I guess chrome, firefox, chromium e.t.c Peope will still use google search
Can agree with data collecting and chrome Android not being directly revenue generator but this is not how they should tackle it by destroying it as a whole
You are so very wrong on the subject. Since Google depends on the web being a good platform, they can just fund and contribute to the entity maintaining Chromium. For the consumer and developers nothing would change aside from Google not being able to single-handedly push controversial decisions like removing support for MV3.
Also, I’ve been using Firefox (and Safari) primarily for more then a decade now, I really don’t get the hate
0:30 - No it doesn't, Internet survived Netscape and Internet Explorer, it move away from Applets and SWF... Chromium is the base of almost all browsers on market. The Internet will move on, as will Chromium... I hope this can ease the grasp that Alphabet has around the Internet's neck!
It survived by the market not by the state
100%
"The web needs Chrome" it really doesn't, the web existed before Chrome.
I Don't want Chrome..
just watch video damit
He literally said web existed before but chrome made revolution and using web useful as it is today
literally good amount of apps which you don't even know uses chrome
steam uses chrome without chrome better part of steam wouldn't work
and that's just steam lot of other apps and services uses chrome too
@@navoJ some years ago "the web needed Internet Explorer", IE is gone and the web is still fine... the web doesn't need chrome, chrome needs the web
@@navoJMaybe we should have kept web technologies on the web and not try to turn everything into a janky-ass, bloated, slow webapp.
And we willingly chose Chrome over that, no one needed to divest IE
Chrome is the most popular browser _because_ of Google's anti competitive behavior. Google has two faces, the open source contributor and the anti competitive monster. Google selling Chrome _does not stop them from contributing to Chromium_. So if all they cared about was making the web faster then they have no reason to own Chrome. They can continue to develop on it and make stuff work better. But that's not their goal. They make money off of harvesting users' data, hence the desire to maintain control over Chrome.
Also your view of Firefox makes it completely clear why you want Chrome to not be sold. All your toy browsers completely depend on it. The way Mozilla is doing it is the right way, don't just implement stuff because Google wants it. Literally Google implements more and more features that completely lock users into Chrome, while making alternative browsers (non-chromium) even harder to maintain.
Man, Google has got you by the balls. It doesn't really matter if you've disagreed with Google in the past, it's clear that you aren't actually looking at how Chrome _became_ a monopoly and how they maintain that hold.
"this isn't just take this from Google, hurt google take chrome away, this is an attempt to destroy the web" absolutely not. Mozilla was doing just fine before Chrome came along. What is hurting FF now is Google pumping out new web features faster than any other browser can keep up, thus making Chrome the most popular browser. You want the latest features, you're _forced_ to use Chrome. If Chrome goes away, then we go back to actual proper releases where it's _discussed_ what features to add to the web rather than Google pumping out stuff willy nilly. Browser creators can keep up and they aren't always one step (or a thousand) behind Chrome at every moment. Firefox will not die from Chrome being sold (sold dude, it's not going to stop existing) because Firefox existed long before Chrome ever did. Same with every other browser creator.
What are you talking about? Of course no company purely cares about open-source contributions. They care about it because it incentivizes their proprietary product (by driving developer education and overall talent of the world towards improving it). This _would stop them from contributing to Chromium_ in the same capacity, as they no longer benefit from improving the browser without reaping its benefits.
I do agree with your second paragraph though. Chrome pushing the web forward, also means it has a huge say in what the *standard* is. So it's good Firefox hasn't handcuffed themselves into being a purely compliant browser and breaking compatibility where necessary.
Yeah right, "Mozilla is doing it the right way". They spend most of the money they get from their Google overlords on anything BUT Firefox. A whole load of political nonsense. Mozilla is an utter failure of an organisation, they did nothing to become sustainable. The corporation that runs advertisement business, harvests user data and pretends to be not-for-profit.
@@VivekYadav-ds8oz Why would they not benefit from contributing to Chromium? They currently do, then package their own custom browser with Google specific features in it. If it was exactly what Theo said and they just wanted to improve the web for everyone then they would have no problem contributing to just Chromium and not owning Chrome anymore. Clearly they gain something explicit from Chrome and not Chromium. User data.
Also it seems like my second comment was deleted, either by UA-cam's algorithm or Theo, but it was about how Theo states that FF would be destroyed if Chrome was sold, which is just complete nonsense. FF existed before Chrome and it will continue to exist without Chrome. Chrome is pushing web standards that force other browser creators to keep up and so of course it costs millions and millions of dollars to try and keep up, essentially leaving everyone 2 steps behind at all times. If Chrome stopped doing that, Mozilla wouldn't need the money it does today to actually build a decent browser.
the web shouldn't depend on google. i think this would likely make it worse in the short term, but absolutely better in the long term without google's monopoly
Nah. It’s time for a change. The issues that arise will be programming issues that are totally solvable. Google demonstrated bad faith by nerfing search for profits. They do not have consumer interests at heart.
Isn't UA-cam owned by Google 🤣
@@TomS699and?
@@TomS699 Both would be affected by Chrome sale.
They demonstrated worse faith when they tried to DRM the web (aka WebIntegrity) and when they nerfed the majority of actually useful extensions with MV3 in a way that every chromium based browser had to comply with
They demonstrated worse faith when they tried to DRM the web and when they nerfed the majority of actually useful extensions with MV3
This is great news in the long term. The point is to break the monopoly, the data monopoly, one company should not have this much control over world's data. This will lead to a more decentralised web.
100%
It all depends if Chromium and Firefox still get the development they need. Because building a competitor is a huge undertaking.
Firefox is garbage? It doesn't work? Huh?
Yeah that made no sense. Firefox achieves everything any normal person needs from a browser, plus doesn’t have any Google tracking junk
@darcyowens it does have problems on some web sites. They have obviously not tested enough but it causes me problems every now and then.
I migrated to firefox about a year ago and have had pretty much zero issues. I wonder why Theo thinks this?
He's mostly just pissed off about firefox's AV layer.
Only issues encountered are from sites explicitly only allowing Chrome, bypassed it using a user agent switcher
Isn't the whole point that Google IS earning through ads throughout the entire web, and that Chrome and their influence on the web to benefit their ad business (e.g. manifest v3 and privacy sandbox), rather than the search engine argument?
The search engine argument is purely about google paying the competitors for default search engine use, which is monopolistic.
You're kinda late even tho you filmed this as breaking news lol
It just took a while to edit
There is nothing in the video which can take more than 10min to edit 😅. He is late because he is in his parents house and he's not aware of it.@@ego-lay_atman-bay
Ok Theo - different proposal
1. Force them to let go of Android and spin that off into a foundation founded by an industry coalition so Google can keep that thing alive alongside Samsung, OnePlus and all the other Smartphone Vendors that run Android
2. Force them to let go of Chromium and spin that off into a foundation founded by an industry coalition
The point of this is not that google is not the single entity dictating the way forward for the web and mobile any longer
Also "Chill our investment in artificial intelligence" is probably the best reason they could give for why this is actually a good thing
Hopefully you work at DOJ
chromium would be perfect as a community coalition ngl
99% of the chromium-pumped bs is really google-pumped bs that in some cases even microsoft objected to. and nowadays there's just too many stakeholders in that browser.
the linux foundation or similar would be a far better place for it ngl
@@dead-claudia why not any single community driver web engine succeeded yet then ?
@@Malix_Labs Firefox did and Ladybird is gaining traction,but Chromium should be industry coalition like op said
I suggest Linux foundation, they've been pretty good so far.
Chrome should be lead as a nonprofit/public service project.
Google is a monopoly, and governments around the world world have taken action towards Google and similar tech giants. However, US Government just washed their hands off of responsibilty and did the most nearsighted action.
Someone in the DOJ is not a fan of web components
Edit: but you are wrong about google’s biz model. The ads are valuable specifically because google tracks peoples’ search habits and builds profiles on them, which can be used to better micro target ads and provide intel on consumers to their ad customers.
"Google must have all the power, why else would they give us all this free stuff?" is a kiss-ass attitude. Authoritarianism can lead to some positive outcomes, it's not uncommon for people to support it. Still, I'd rather have a more equal playing field with less consolidated power at the expense of a messier web.
Google has definitely has a monopoly on the browser space, it's not a good thing. Sill sticking to Firefox. It's not quite as fast but way more flexible. And with a few changes you get your privacy back. Forcing them to sell it is a bit radical, but the web was fine before chome, it will be fine after.
Yes!
Agreed
Move Chrome and Android to a foundation where Google will be a member
That would be same as today they will be the in charge and have same control as of now I don't see hiding them under different name. We can keep it as right now
Maybe now other browsers will stand a chance at innovating the web browser market.
Like I could see the chromium based browsers just forking chromium, maybe set up a "chromium forum" similar to how we have the vesa foundation and USB forum. A group that maintains the open source project with reps from multiple companies that oversee the development
Chromium is still staying. Nothing of value is lost.
I do agree that what DoJ proposes is an overreach. And I think it's why it will not pass/continue.
However, I totally disagree that it will kill the web or anything remotely close to that. There's plenty of innovation done outside Google. If Chrome disappears today, sites and products won't break, as Chromium can serve them with absolutely no issues. If Chrome disappears today, we won't be stuck in the current version of the web, it will continue to be improved. Maybe slower, but we'll be absolutely fine.
I hate this type of argument so much. That if we don't sell our soul to the devil (figuratively) then we won't be able to do anything. Ok, maybe 10 or 15 years ago it might've been closer to the truth, but even then I don't agree that we wouldn't have have the benefits of the modern day browsers without Chrome. It would've taken longer most likely. But nobody would've died because of that. But it's even less of a concern now, with thousands of non-google engineers contributing to web standards and browser code.
I wouold also not discount Firefox so quickly. It's true that most of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google, but a lot of the revenue is wasted on useless projects (usually DEI stuff) and on the woke staff itself that managed to get the leadership. Firefox developers don't get a lot of cash. Not getting the money from Google might actually be better for Mozilla and Firefox, as it might be freed from the woke management and steered back into competence and relevancy by engineers and ACTUAL free speech activists. And if they make a dedicated Firefox-devs only donation category, I'm sure that there will be people chiming in (myself included), enough to at least keep the current funding the developers get.
I like how you completely ignored the fact how Google is shaping chrome to be more of an ad serving platform. No blockers towards fingerprinting, pushing attestation. Chrome has majority of market share in browser which is already a bad thing on top of that Google who's major revenue source is advertisement what can go wrong?
This same legal argument is what got Microsoft in hot trouble with Microsoft Explorer. Microsoft Explorer was seen as monopolistic because it came packaged with Windows.
"This is not clickbait" Yes it is. Even in the worst case, Chromium will be forked and we'll just have it right alongside firefox and safari like we always have.
Breaking a monopoly is not a bad thing, there are issues that will arise yes, but that is fault to a dependency to said monopoly lasting too long, the issues will be solved and browsers need some actual competition, and no chromium skins doesnt count
real
There's many things I really love about Google. But how they control like 80% of the internet is not one of it. This is a good thing.
I think the problem we are at with the web is that its so integrated into our lives its like a public service or resource. Your local library or park or roads or policing is usually maintained by the government and these companies are basically filling this place for the government. We can't afford to have the internet fragmented just like it wouldn't be sustainable with real world services. Monopolies have to exist but left to become one will eventually work in their own interests against consumers. I don't think there is a good solution either way, things just need to be nudged in the right direction.
You say that Firefox is a garbage browser that doesn't want to support web standards because apparently they don't like some of them. Well surprise surprise, the same exact same thing can be said about Chrome. Remember this thing called jpeg-xl, how do you justify Chrome refusing to support it?
jpeg-xl, webp, and other formats are not web standards. They are not part of any WhatWG, W3C or ECMA specifications. It's an entirely separate issue.
Call it whatever you want to call it. The point here is that they can arbitrarily decide not to support a given technology even if it is superior, and just pretend it's not a big deal, even after there was a big push from the industry. Do you think they would've pushed MV3 on everyone or choose to ignore JPEG-XL if for example Chrome had 10% market share. I'm sure you're smart enough to know the answer to this question.
@@dechobarcano, he had exactly a point.
One thing is to not support things outside of standard, and completely different is fighting against standards.
First is secondary, while second is primary support. Because web relies on standards, otherwise it becomes a mess.
[You know issue with why jpeg-xl is not a standard? Because of how resource intensive it is to decode.] UPD: my bad, hadn't researched too much. 70% decode speed of JPEG is pretty much fine. But it still is not a standard. Not even close.
Also, afaik AVIF is also not standard.
But, i can poke you back in other way.
I can play back H.265 video in Chrome if there is system level codec installed. But i cannot do that in Firefox, because guess what? They don't support H.265 at all. Not even with external codecs.
And, mind you, H.265 is way more popular than jpeg-xl afaik. And yet Mozilla declines to implement even basic compatability. So much for your competition stimulating implementation of additional features as argument.
@@DimkaTsv There is so much wrong and misinformation in your comment that I'm not even sure it's worth debating here.
"As with its predecessor AVC, software distributors that implement HEVC in products must pay a price per distributed copy.[i] While this licensing model is manageable for paid software, it is an obstacle to most free and open-source software, which is meant to be freely distributable."
"Sequential JPEG is unbeatable in terms of decode speed - not surprising for a codec that was designed in the 1980s. Progressive JPEG (e.g. as produced by mozjpeg and default jpegli) is somewhat slower to decode, but still fast enough to load any reasonably-sized image in the blink of an eye. JPEG XL is somewhere in between those two."
Took me less than 5 min of research to find this information.
@@dechobarca Whether something is "superior" is subjective. There's no perfect solution to everything, and there are plenty of reasons to not support JPEG-XL; for example that the specification wasn't even finalized until 2022.
Despite this, the Chromium team at Google were the initial push for WebKit team to add support for JPEG-XL in the first place, as they were already implementing the reference material of JPEG-XL into Chromium, even before the standard was finalized.
They didn't implement it into Chrome, as 1) there were no incentive for them to do so at the time, given only a minority said they wanted it, but there was little to no demand, and 2) The speeds were marginally worse compared to WebP, and there were no hardware accelerated support for the format to benefit from video codecs, natively supported by a lot of hardware. So the decision was made to remove support until enough guarantees could be made to qualify the required support and maintenance.
Apple is in a unique position in that they own platforms and hardware that can be utilized to provide a better user experience; they are also having real use-cases, like their website, which are very image-heavy and _could_ benefit from the format (but yet still doesn't).
So it makes more sense for Apple to push support into their browsers.
Our company uses CEF an embedded chromium platform. This is scary.
The lawsuit isn't what we got from Chrome, it's what it took from others - fair competition and a chance to do business. And I'm a Chrome-only user ever since it came out.
I hear a lot of people say Theo is a clown and a bit of a grifter. That wasn't my view and I thought his critics were harsh but when he says Chrome's demise is a 'death sentence for the web' and forcing its sale is 'terrifying' I think they might have a point. Unsubscribed.
Really a disservice to not mention how much Google pays Apple for default search, to fund its ads beast, as a mark against them.
Antitrust intervention is a very blunt, disruptive tool. Still a good thing.
Reading Google’s article about this is really crazy
who else has suffered the 14 days testing for Android :(
This process is certainly highly politicized. Both Android and Chromium are widely used and improved upon in other countries like China, which gave them an upper hand in joining the competition in software and electronics markets. The Linux Foundation kicked out Russian maintainers recently to be compliant with one particular party. The USA now is changing its strategy from globalism to mercantilism, and it seems that open source as we know it will change because of it. Chromium will probably stop development, as well as Firefox may lose its financing. Thus "closed apps market" seems to be not a bug but a goal and a feature of this process. If this speculation is correct, we will see that big companies will cease their advances in critical open-source software.
Google is not the only company able to develop a browser, and monetize it by spying on your navigation habits and reselling it to advertisers.
It's bigger than a web engine. They should be descentralized and fully open source in order to avoid one company pushing where they need to push their browser to be able to force their own services to work well only on their engine so they can still gather all your data and target you with more ads.
Imagine if the gov or gov controlled entity buys chrome to gain control over web
But how does this affect The Browser Company's quest to 7 trillion users?
Can't you feel the rise in temperature, from them rubbing their hands together? 😅
Chrome is just new IE.
It “drives” too fast and adding more and more inconsistencies from other browsers’ implementation. The more and more I hear about “this doesnt work in chrome” or “this only works in chrome”… Im glad something is happening, It does not deserve the trust it has gotten up to this time.
The gov is soo wrong in this regard. This is not a problem at all. The people have already chosen, and Chrome is FREE! This is really gov members trying to look cool and other haters trying to knock them off the top spot. The gov needs to leave Chorme alone and focus on why public education and health care sucks.
Balloons were a nice touch
stop calling Firefox garabage, Quantum Project significantly improved browser as whole.
Yellow 40 hair
Seeing apples reactions pop up in videos is one of my favorite things
I agree that selling of chrome might hurt the web, so they should just ban stuff that chrome does badly / monopolistic
I disagree with the sentiment in this video, because if we go "Google cant be broken up because it would be bad for the internet", then thats literally the definition of a monopoly and Google would be "too big to fail". It would be America's version of Samsung.
You will never change to be the big corporations apologist?
I too worry about how this will play out.
Chrome has generally driven things in correct direction despite the company that Google can be.
L take. I have 0 ability to feel any pity for Google, and yeah, with the size and market share of chrome and android, it's impossible for there to be competition. Competition is objectively a good thing in any market. So if the doj's decision causes a bit of a shake up, ruffle the market a bit to make things actually competitive again, I think the average Joe could benefit more from that than from the status quo.
I personally don't care that much about the web. The most interesting stuff happens in local apps anyway because of performance requirements. (Games are the best example of this)
Thanks for the sharing this news.
I had no idea Google was open sourced for other web browsers and funding Firefox, wow!
It's the same for and4oid, so Many companies like Samsung use Android and Taylor it to their needs. I didn't realize how big of an impact Google has on the web and Android
Break up the monopoly. Divesting Chrome and Android are necessary to stop Google from using the current power it holds to push out more competition from the web. Chromium and other Google open source projects are really a defense, and for Android, a legacy choice that they would likely not make again should they have had the chance to decide from the start.
What will happen to Mozilla/Firefox is worrying, but at the end of the day, someone will step in to provide the need. Hopefully someone, or many someones, that have the public's best interests at heart -- because you average consumer really has no idea how data collection works.
I am sure your pov against Apple is even more harsh then, right ?
@@Malix_Labs Mostly -- I am not sure Apple is as much of a concern on the privacy fronts, though, and in a web context they are not as monolithic as Google. But they still have heavy monopoly-esque powers (remember, Google has been convicted of plotting themselves into a monopoly, Apple has not)
Apple has still done very sketchy monopolistic things, like enforcing Lightning connectors on their devices and creating a monopoly on their app market. They just have a tendency to be more easily strong-armed out of those practices by political forces like the EU
It's really not. The web is terrible and practically dead as is, in large part thanks to Google. It might hurt the comfort usage of web for a regular consumer for a while, but just a couple of years tops. This would be healthy overall in the long run, and I really hope "the new chrome" won't eat 95% percent of market share again
The web runs on V8, Iḿ mostly concerned about that. The problem is ¨Designed to run on MS IE 6.0¨ became ¨Works on Chrome¨. Since Opera and Edge became a skin on Chromium Chrome is becoming a bad anchor. Would like to see more advancement on Servo, IMO. A choice screen was the solution when MSIE was dominant, Microsoft was forced to add a ¨choose a default browser¨. So there is *precedent in the law* , what are you talking about?
You're conflating so many things. Servo is not a JavaScript engine-it's a rendering engine, nothing more, nothing less. V8 is not tied any one browser, let alone Chrome. It's a general purpose JavaScript engine, used by other runtimes and is completely separate from the Chromium source code.
@@dealloc Well, I mean V8 is financially dependent on Google. There can be little way to monetize it, but the world depends on it (most runtimes bind to it) since no one else seems to be smart enough to produce anything close. The point is this is great for the speed of development of V8 (we get a lot of new features) but monocultures are generally bad. Whoever finances Chrome and Chromium will have to bear the burden of V8 too, *I guess* . I hope that makes more sense. Would you see V8 being handed off to a ¨Linux Foundation¨ or Apache?
Well point taken on Servo too. I guess the better comparison would have been Spidermonkey + (Servo or FF or smth else).
If the competition Products aren't better, we simply stick to Google. So wtf do they want? If they aren't better, they will never be chosen at all. Damn, ppl get crazy with all Inflation, first Matt, now Goverment against Google? LET ME TAKE MY POPCORN!
SAAS's success has been mostly due to Chrome.
Silicon Valley produced 300+ unicorns during the past 20 years.
Over the past 20 years Silicon Valley has mostly been producing SAAS companies.
Over 40% of VC fundings have went into SAAS Start-Ups!
Without Google pushing the web standards, web platform will stagnate.
Without an awesome web platform, people would have to download and install millions of apps on their devices.
App makers will be limited by devices capabilities.
Without Android, Apple and Microsoft will the write the rules and slow down innovation.
Device manufactures will own their customers.
That was a great ad for "me". Thanks for the content
Regulations are just a byproduct of itchiness in a random regulator butt, it is simple as that, no need to argue about how is this a bad thing because it will not change how they act. When the itchiness comes, more regulations.
Google search has gone way downhill. But having to sell chrome is one of the dumbest things ive heard.
The people doing this probably dont even know how to make a pdf.
Yes, this is clickbait, and the idea that Chrome would die or that the web will die without Chrome is laughable.
If Google cares soo much about the web and open source. They can give money to new company that will be taking over chrome & chromium.
Or they can give more to firefox haha
Why would taking chrome away from google force them to stop innovating the web? If anything they have to
ok so separe apple from appstore and safari
The web don't need chrome.
Google should move to Argentina, I mean it serious, with Javier Milei this would not happen.
The internet shouldn't be Google or Chrome and that's the issue. Yes, the internet would be (arguable) a worst place without it, but a monopoly isn't better.
I don't see how they could force Google to sell Chrome tho, or find anyone who could buy it without making things worst (like allowing meta to buy it)
just got chrome ad before the vid
Chrome needs to be taken from google. Yea it’s going to be hard for the web but it’s already bad with google owning search and owning the browser. I’m tired of people saying this is a bad thing. This needs to happen
The web will be fine. Google doesn't have to own Chrome to contribute to it. Chromium is still open source, as you say. Why assume that Google wouldn't continue Chromium contributions?
What are your gripes with Firefox?
I hope they go after Microsoft instead :D
The author is wrong. Yes, Google has a vision, and of course there are positive aspects, BUT according to its vision, no one else should make the web better, that's the problem. The problem is that we will never have Google 2 and Google 3 precisely because of the existence of Google 1. We are talking about a monopoly, not about closing Chrome. If Chrome becomes a separate company, the company's revenue will suffer, not the users.
Inb4 Tencent buys Chrome, then adds Gacha & daily login rewards 😅
Despite Chrome being annoying in that there are no neat features similar to those that Arc provides, it provides a LOT of stability. Stability makes web development soooooo much easier. Chrome is robust, we just need to look over MDN over what features are supported by different browsers vs Chrome (okay sure Chromium probably pushes these spec the most). Backwards compatibility although making codebases bloated, makes development so much easier - Chromium and Chrome provide that to an extent. On the contrary, not to dunk on LLVM devs, but upgrading LLVM versions is such a damn pain.
If Chrome is forced to moved to a buyer with different intents, web development might feel like Ja.. ECMAScript having breaking changes on every minor patch...
Oracle might just flip the bill to start demanding user licences from every single Chrome user 😂
Your reasoning that google has no incentive to fund safari and Firefox after separating chrome from google is weird, makes no sense.
Not sure where he says something about it, but the US government prevents them from funding 3rd parties. They still have the incentive, they just aren't allowed to do it.
We need Trump and whoever he picks for DOJ to fix this woke mess.
The development of the web will continue with or without google
Why aren't they making google divest youtube, like the ONLY other profitable part of the company?
Split Google into different businesses is a stupid idea
Gotta become a Gopher developer now.
Yeah. Its scaring me too man. I'm team google. Keep CHROME!!! Selling it off could realllly hurt us. Not to mention the power vacuum.
I feel as though google supporting firefox by giving them real money is t real competition. If i was just getting money to exist, there is no incentive for me to compete, at that point firefox is just there so google can point at them and say, "Hey look, thats our competitor" even though they would do anything to keep the money coming from google.
This is just going to lead to a multiple companies sharing a webstandard. Google by no means is the only reason the web can succeed. This has happened over and over in tech's past.
Ad display is only one part of the problem. You're missing the part Chrome is used to collect information for ads. What makes this good is that they're forced to get rid of their ability to collect information which allows targeted advertising.
Further, it's best for cybersecurity and development if we stop using the browser like an OS. It shouldn't be an OS plain and simple. To push it to be one is just against performance and the nature of software.
Why did you go on vacation? Something happens every time.
Claiming that Firefox has a specific site to list features they refuse to implement is misleading. What you’re referring to is a specification site that all browsers use to track their position and collaborate with spec authors on whether new proposals make sense. If a proposal is accepted and added to the baseline, Firefox will implement it, sometimes imperfectly, sure, but they do implement it.
and yes the chrome one is better because it tracks way more than just itself, they are the platform moving web forward for sure, but that doesn't mean that other browser are refusing to implement features just because they are bad
This is very good, google makes 50 bilions a quater from ads, they have too much, they can buy too much
That's Alphabet with AdSense NOT Google.
The web needs Chromium, not Chrome. Chrome can f off and crash.
web doesnt need chromium at all... they really not pioneers... remember jpegxl drama?
Just to correct some comments I saw regarding who will buy a browser that does not generate revenue. That was quite off and kind of like a joke. Chrome generates +46% of google services revenue. Yeah you may argue that Adsense had a big role there, but without chrome adsense has no role there, if someone buys chrome they can implement their own ad revenue stream. None is going to stop using google search engine. I personally believe that nothing will change, just new owners and too much panic around.
I think Theo is focusing too much on the web dev perspective. Here are 3 alternative perspectives on whats happening:
- Google is bluffing. Google will be unlikely to disengage from stearing positions as their underlining business comes from the web. They will fight even harder once their network effect is removed (more on that below) that will force them to actually compete.
- Companies etc. using arguments like "U.S. tech leadership" is basically saying: "we can't compete without these monopolies". You should then ask, against who? U.S. has by far the biggest startup ecosystem. Draghis EU competiveness report showed a chart where U.S. led startups have over 80% more access to capital than EU nations combined from preseed to Series x. That means that the most likely challengers to Google and other big tech monopolies are U.S. based tech startups. Will EU startups benefit, yes, but most benefit will come to U.S. based startups/enterprises.
- The only way you can really remove tech monopolies is by removing the network effect that big tech have gained. In Googles case, Chrome and Android create the demand for Googles services by feeding users to create new Google accounts and by providing data on their behaviour. This then feeds into their search advantage. By removing Chrome and Android, DoJ would effectively force Google to compete for those accounts and data instead of getting them "out of the box".
So imagine a world where you use Chrome and Android but instead of having only an option to login with your Google account for backups etc, you could use your Dropbox account as the sync service... or maybe a new service that instead of being "free" you paid 15€/month to not be tracked and it would in theory work as well as the Google account.
What does this mean for V8?
Thoe i'm not sure if i should be ashamed or not. but when you said a ad was coming up and i sat here waiting for said ad and for it to never show than remember i don't see ads on youtube ever at all. it's a two plugin system i use on every browser chrome firefox and others that support it. a adblocker and a sponsor blocker it even blocks some self sponsor sections.
and will all of this actually effect my cloud gaming program i'm making that's based on well with several prototypes i've not decided but so far i've leaned towards chromium based but i have had more promise with QT's webview system i am not sure if theirs is custom or if it's based on chrome but it works and i don't argue with it's working normally. okay that last bit was a lie i defo argue with it's working sometimes.
I would propose removal of Google search as a default search engine and be able to remove the Google play services (even though you can via adb)
While I generally understand the worries, you haven't really addressed the core issues of this situation. I think it's obvious to everybody that Google puts a lot of resources into Chrome and that its success is beneficial to the web at large. This is still a very narrow consideration: if Chrome was not profitable for Google, they would have dropped it. Given that it is profitable for them, it is clearly profit derived from being a monopoly in the browser space. This fact is very problematic: it undermines the core idea of a 'web' and gradually makes the Internet a product made by Google. Also, if no one else can make profit from developing browsers, the economic model of the web is highly flawed. If breaking them up is going to be a massive blow to web development, that is all the more reason to do it now. Eventually it will recover. What alternative do you suggest? Allowing the web to finally degrade into a privately owned environment?
the arguments brought forward in this video are so flawed, it's almost funny. Almost.
The comment about chromium losing development is a nonissue. Other browsers based on chromium will get more use and funding and can develop chromium further. Google will still have power in TC39 and will contribute, but their position will be way different as they do not have personal interests to hinder competition. Recent requests for standardization have made competition much more difficult.