I am opposite to this.
Present day Google IS chrome and as much as i am disgusted by them and want them broken up forcing a sale of chrome does not make sense and could actually spiral into the collapse of the company. (Don’t threaten me with a good time)
All internet platforms want a… well platform to have users on. An interface/environment that in its most profitable form can be plastered with ads.
For the google of old this used to be its search engine website.
But it sucks now, the web has kept growing and most people only need a different tiny fraction of it.
Yes its dominant, but its getting increasingly bad and will get increasingly useless as we start using smarter ai to filter (not re-generate) the web to our needs.
This is why openai wants to buy chrome, they want to replace all that google was with themselves.
Google also have their workspace platforms but there are no standalone apps. They are inherently designed for in browser use.
All of this means it makes a lot of sense they have a clear incentive to want to control the browser. Because its the frame that contains almost everything they do.
Compare that with microsoft, who owns the majority of operating systems, the entire office platform, and is also still competing with a search engine. And they still get keep bing?
Burn both these corpos but the logic applied here makes no sense.
I am purposely ignoring all the other projects, robotics, Because honestly half of them never get to product and they don’t really effect the identity of theirs business as much.
If anything it would make more to sell these other projects like autonomous cars, you know they are just going to try take over taxi services first and delivery services second if they get to keep that.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It’s not only about the brand, it’s about the installed base. You have hundreds of millions (billion plus?) of users who use your application every day for a wide variety of tasks.
Olap@lemmy.world 4 days ago
And if you start fucking with them then they will all go to Google’s new browser. Just like the old one. Not all, but you get the picture. Chrome isn’t worth $50bn to anyone but Google
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 4 days ago
That is a possibility.
However, I think in this particular case, the DDG CEO is better qualified than me or you to evaluate the value of Chrome. I can’t think of any reason for Weinberg to promote an inflated valuation for Chrome.
Olap@lemmy.world 4 days ago
CEOs are weird. DDG might be a privacy champion but it isn’t a for profit company. Meaning Weinberg wants to make bucks too. If Chrome is worth $50bn what does that make ddg worth? If Google get slapped with an anti-trust and forced to break up, who might benefit from the big bucks that might be floating around? And ever noticed how CEOs tend to fail up? Fluffing google is a nice advert for the next head of google search here.
Show me monetisation strategies, and hence value per user for the installed base if you want to claim that kinda figures imo