In recent news, Google has put forth a proposal known as the "Web Environment Integrity Explainer", authored by four of its engineers. On the surface, it
Google is the developer of Chromium and the Chrome browser which uses Chromium. Chromium is free and open source (though owned by Google).
I’m not sure how you break up Chrome and Google. That’s literally their product. Who are we giving this to? There are browsers that do not use Chromium (e.g., Firefox and Safari being the big ones).
Companies have gotten broken up before, like AT&T once did many years ago. In this case, a Google breakup would probably separate some of their services into different companies. At the very least Google (the “advertising” company) should be separate from Chrome (the “browser” company), because it creates a conflict of interest and creates monopolistic behavior.
In any case, trying to do something is better than doing nothing and hoping it turns out all right.
I think the poster is making a good point though- In this split, google the advertising company can freely contribute to the open source chromium. You need some model that leads the chromium maintainer to reject changes like this.
I’m sure there’s some mechanism in antitrust to prevent the broken up companies from doing things like that. Otherwise, a “primary” company would just contract out the old other pieces and they’re basically whole again.
Google isnt Google anymore. It’s Alphabet. Alphabet includes Google domains, Android, Gmail, YouTube, chrome, Google search, search ads, play store, fuscia, Google maps, authenticator, chat, classroom, assistant, meet, nest, pixel, waze, Gboard, messages, google tv, Google photos and the rest
Each one of these have their own presidents, their own boards, their own teams. They are all directed by Alphabet.
Honest curiosity on your answer to this.
Google is the developer of Chromium and the Chrome browser which uses Chromium. Chromium is free and open source (though owned by Google).
I’m not sure how you break up Chrome and Google. That’s literally their product. Who are we giving this to? There are browsers that do not use Chromium (e.g., Firefox and Safari being the big ones).
Companies have gotten broken up before, like AT&T once did many years ago. In this case, a Google breakup would probably separate some of their services into different companies. At the very least Google (the “advertising” company) should be separate from Chrome (the “browser” company), because it creates a conflict of interest and creates monopolistic behavior.
In any case, trying to do something is better than doing nothing and hoping it turns out all right.
The US also separated movie producers from exhibitors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.
And now all studios have their own steaming service.
I think the poster is making a good point though- In this split, google the advertising company can freely contribute to the open source chromium. You need some model that leads the chromium maintainer to reject changes like this.
I’m sure there’s some mechanism in antitrust to prevent the broken up companies from doing things like that. Otherwise, a “primary” company would just contract out the old other pieces and they’re basically whole again.
That’s true, I just wonder if open source changes anything, legally. Unless one term of the breakup is “will not contribute to chromium”
Google isnt Google anymore. It’s Alphabet. Alphabet includes Google domains, Android, Gmail, YouTube, chrome, Google search, search ads, play store, fuscia, Google maps, authenticator, chat, classroom, assistant, meet, nest, pixel, waze, Gboard, messages, google tv, Google photos and the rest
Each one of these have their own presidents, their own boards, their own teams. They are all directed by Alphabet.
Cool.
Breakup Alphabet then
Spin it off on their own and survive like Firefox. Browsers make money putting links in the homepage and adding search engines.