Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Who would possibly buy Chrome? Letting any of the large tech companies purchase it (the only possible buyers) would just give someone else monopolistic power.

Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.




Very few companies would be able to manage a gigantic project like Chromium.

I happen to be poking around the Chromium codebase the last few days. The size of the codebase itself is at the same level as all of our company's code. Something as important and critical as GPU rendering is only a small part of the entire project. You also have v8, ChromeOS, ANGLE etc to worry about, all requiring experts in those areas. Not to mention things like Widevine and other proprietary technology surrounding Chrome.


I'll do it, if they agree to sell it to me, I'll run it.

I have a few hundred bucks that I'm willing to put into the pie, but based on the financials, it's probably going to go bankrupt pretty quick.


> based on the financials, it's probably going to go bankrupt pretty quick.

Stage 1: Buy Chrome from Google, with its 65% browser market share.

Stage 2: Tell Google you'll keep them as default search provider for $5 billion per year.

Stage 3: Profit


> Tell Google you'll keep them as default search provider for $5 billion per year

The DOJ is working to ban search deals too, you wouldn't receive a single penny. The DOJ is incomprehensibly incompetent compared to the EU DMA/DSA.


I assume this will create issues with Mozilla too?


But didn't Firefox run into funding issues because they can't sell Google the privilege of being the default search?


I'm pretty sure they can, and do. The vast majority of Mozillas revenues come from Google for being the default search provider. The fact that Google pays Mozilla, Apple and Samsung (among others) to be the default search provider has been an issue with regulators, but as far as I know there has been no rulings on it (yet?).


Yeah, probably not worth the money


It's 95% of an operating system. In a way it is it's own OS. Chromium has ~ 500+ distinct APIs and features such as web APIs, extension APIs, DOM, JavaScript APIs, and platform-specific features.


"Who would possibly buy Chrome?"

This is illustrates the extent and magnitude of the problem to fix the internet. That regulators failed to give enough oversight of the internet and to regulate its monopolistic players several decades ago when these problems first became obvious has meant that they are now almost insurmountable.

Ideally, Google would be forced to divest itself of Chrome and that Chrome would become an open source project a la Linux. Clearly, that's very unlikely to happen.

For those who'd argue that Chrome would have no funding to further develop I'd respond by saying that it already works well as a browser and from observation that Google is channeling most of Chrome's development funds into anti-features that are hostile to users.

As an open source project that level of funding would be no longer necessary and its future development could progress at a slower pace.


> Ideally, Google would be forced to divest itself of Chrome and that Chrome would become an open source project a la Linux. Clearly, that's very unlikely to happen.

Chrome's upstream (Chromium) is already open source. If Google is forbidden from sponsoring Chromium's development, and that of its proprietary downstream distribution (Chrome) who's going to fund Chromium's development? Even if forced to divest, Google will always have an outsized sway on any open source browser due to the engineer-hours they can spend on contributions. If they are blocked from even that, then the whole exercise would be anti-consumer IMO.


If Google were forced to divest itself of Chrome and there were no takers then Chromium would take on an altogether different perspective. That Chromium exists shows there's already an existing infrastructure that would make transitioning to it relatively straightforward.

Incidentally, I don't use Chrome, only Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers.


> That Chromium exists shows there's already an existing infrastructure that would make transitioning to it relatively straightforward.

I think there’s a very very substantial underlying infrastructure maintained and funded by google that would disappear. This isn’t a GitHub project where you can clone and make install.


The fundamental core problem with the internet is that users have an innate feeling that they have a right to view content without being charged for it.

Google's entire existence is predicated on the ad-model internet existing, and internet users have overwhelmingly voted for this model of internet over the last 30 years.

People hate ads, but they hate opening their wallet even more.


Much as many are loathe to admit it decommercialization of huge swathes of the internet is, in fact, possible. People can make and share things without a financial incentive, and if that means that we have to reckon with the dysfunctional nature of the status quo - millions of livelihoods dependent on the grace of a few megacorporations - maybe that's a good thing (in the long run). Or, I guess we can just let the Attention-Industrial complex swallow everything without a fight.


may as well just discontinue it then and let Chromium take its place


Yeah, but if Google were forced to divest Chrome then parts of its proprietary code would have to be open-sourced and integrated into Chromium to minimize disruption to users. Alternatively, Google would have to make its services more interoperable.


Or bundle all the prop code and services into a plugin for chromium.


An internet tax could pay for it.


In the most chaotic alternate reality possible: Mozilla


Interestingly if I recall correctly a lot of the original talent for Chrome/Chromium originally worked at Mozilla and were poached by Google. [1]

[1] https://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/09/google-chrome.html...


This is such a valuable article from 2008. I've archived it here: https://archive.is/hVove


Having it owned by a non-profit foundation would make a huge amount of sense, especially if that foundation was then immediately funded by a variety of companies rather than just one big advertising company.

The obvious test for whether the browser is actually independent: what is the response to "let's add an ad-blocker by default".


> Having it owned by a non-profit foundation would make a huge amount of sense,...

OpenAI joined the chat...


There would be few incentives to try and pull off something like that if nobody had any faith in the product every becoming extremely profitable though.


Isn't openapi pro-profit? Or at least I thought it was.


This is wishful thinking. Non-profits that don’t turn into for-profit turn into a shitshow of incompetence instead.


You all need to learn about employer owned companies, in Brasil it's called cooperativas not sure in english, and that would fix that


Not necessarily, see The Linux Foundation Europe competently maintains Servo.


My comment could rub tech people in the wrong way (for a good reason).

I meant incompetence at the company governance level, not technical.

There's massive technical competence in non-profits.

This brilliance is just wasted by leaders who sacrifice business acumen over the mission.


In that same alternate reality: WPEngine is given control of Automattic/WordPress as a result of the lawsuits.


Firefox is sponsored primary by Google. WPEngine is not. It would be like Automattic giving control to Wordpress foundation.


My intention was to emphasize the irony, not so much the relationship between them. :)


With Mozilla becoming so hostile to their power users in recent years (or any user who just wants to customize the interface or core functionality), I'm not sure it would make much difference.


They'll do what their benefactor (Goog) wants whether they own chrome or not.


That's just a different kind of monopoly.


na... Oracle.


Broadcom.


How would they even sell it, chrome is based off of chromium. What is there to sell exactly? You can already fork chromium


The userbase and trademark are both very valuable. I'm guessing it would also come with some controlling positions in the chromium open source project, since those are mostly held by google by being the biggest developer and user of the project.


Good question. Chrome itself isn't a standalone business, the money generated through Chrome still primarily comes from Ads. The hardware tied to Chromebooks generates some revenue, but even ChromeOS is essentially free. They generate a tiny amount of revenue selling ChromeOS management tools in Workspace. Why not spin off an actual revenue driver like YouTube?


> What is there to sell exactly?

The user base


Logged-in Chrome users are tied to Google logins. The mind boggles at the complexity of trying to somehow separate Chrome identities from Google identities, much less explain that to the general populace for whom "Google", "Chrome" and "browse the Internet" are largely interchangeable.


No boggling required. If you want to sync your browser state or settings across computers, make a Chrome account. If you don’t, don’t. If you want to use Google, make a Google account.

This is how it should work anyway.


100%. And that’s exactly how the DoJ sees it I believe.


> Logged-in Chrome users are tied to Google logins

Third-party sign in with Google [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/account/about/sign-in-with-google/


We had this for ~20 years. It wasn't mind-boggling complex. On the contrary, it was much simpler: you didn't have to "log in" to a piece of software that ran on a computer you owned under a user account you already logged into.


You don't HAVE to login unless you want to share your passwords, history, bookmarks etc. between your devices. Simpler = not having those features (which most users seemingly find useful).


Except if you logon to gmail it automatically logs you in the browser.


> those features (which most users seemingly find useful)

Do they? I would rather not have a "browser account" and just back up my own bookmarks like I was doing 20 years ago.


> Do they?

Presumably yes. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

> and just back up my own bookmarks

Nothing wrong about that. But again.. most people don't find that to be very convenient (I'd actually bet money that that there are is magnitude or a few times more people using Safari/Chrome/etc. to sync their data automatically instead of doing it manually).


> Presumably yes.

I think presuming people want this is like presuming they want 3rd party tracking cookies or that they want their online footprint profiled by the likes of data brokers and palantir and so on. Uninformed consent is not the same as support. Adult humans are mostly smart enough to change their preferences away from convenience when they understand it has bad consequences.


There is no value to logging into chrome with a Google account that couldn't be replicated easily with some standalone service. The fact they added google logins to Chrome still bugs me.


And what do I, the new owner of this user base, do with it?


1. make your search engine the default

2. make your website the default

3. make it easier to access your suite of web services

Eg. imagine instead of defaulting to google everything you typed in the search bar defaulted to chatgpt. Imagine open AI could buy that at a discount


So basically invite the DOJ to immediately take it away again?


probably not going to be a popular take on this forum, but to me it looks like anti trust and securities laws are enforced almost randomly. Is Google a monopoly using its control to limit competition - yes but so is pretty much all of FANG and many successful businesses for that matter.

Anti trust activities are not about any one act (such as routing browsers to your site), it's more about whether the fates choose your company to end up in the DOJs roulette wheel.


This is a bad/uninformed take. The OP is about one particular anti-trust trial that ended already (with Google losing), and is in the remedies phase. The DOJ and FTC have been suing a lot of other companies over anti-trust, including the other big tech companies. Some of those are still ongoing, some haven't started yet, some have already ended.


I think the distinction is that the new Chrome company wouldn't be a "monopolist". If Chrome was a separate company and did exactly the same as Google is doing currently, there might be no problem. It's when a company "abuses" its market position to enter/capture/distort another market (or maintain the original market) is when in theory regulators have an issue. For example, free software is allowed, but when Microsoft used its dominance in the OS market to push a free browser on the world at the detriment to Netscape, regulators took issue.

The issue is that Google's dominance of the search/ad business is distorting the browser market.

This is my take, anyways (I'm not a lawyer or American).


But the DOJ wouldn't take it away. The parent comment describes exactly what the DOJ's desired outcome looks like. That's what will happen if the DOJ gets their way. It's the only possible outcome. The people praising the DOJ's decision don't understand just how stupid it is.


Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Google can no longer be trusted with Chrome; time to give it to another caretaker.


>1. make your search engine the default

>2. make your website the default

>3. make it easier to access your suite of web services

Chrome is not a search engine. Chrome doesn't have a "suite of web services."

That's Alphabet/Google.

Chrome is just the browser.


Or the triumphant return of Yahoo!? (hypothetical, not interrobang)


Be careful. Asking these kind of obvious questions might make you ineligible to be hired as a government bureaucrat.


FYI the name for this type of comment is 'thought terminating cliche'.


> What is there to sell exactly?

widevine and all the other DRMy bits.

Or, better yet, deprecate and disable all the DRMy bits. (One can wish)


> They are also prepared to seek a requirement that Google share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear.

Seems like the DOJ is angling that Chrome should be spun off as an advertising platform of some kind.

Seems so, so much worse.


The full circle of course is MS will end up acquiring it.


This is surely the only real possibility, and puts Edge's shift to Chromium in a new light; could MS have predicted/lobbied for this push?


If this actually happens, I think it would turn perception of Nadella from good CEO that got lucky with OpenAI to a certified shadow master that's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.


I'm pretty sure M$ just shifted to edge because they didn't want to invest the money into catching up with chromium, since explorer was a pile of shit and was losing anyway


How is this the only possibility? What about Opera or something?


"Opera or somethings" tend to be too small. E.g. Google paid 20 billion just to be the default search in Safari, i.e. for a default seat in a significantly less popular browser. Opera's total assets are ~1 billion.

But say it was forced to sell for peanuts because any large company proposal was denied by antitrust review itself, a forced sale of a US company's business to a non-US company under ownership by Chinese investors would likely not be allowed go through in the current environment either. Maybe some other "or something" at this point but it feels a bit like asking for a wildcard play from a very methodical and slow process.


Interesting, I didn't know that Opera was Chinese-investor-funded.

There are a few American companies that could pull it off though; Oracle comes to mind? I know that they don't really work in the browser space, but they have plenty of money, and they work in pretty much every other part of tech.


Then MS is such a giant that it will have to sell it after some time


Nah, MS doesn't own search, ads, email and half the rest of the internet.


MS owns bing. Which isn’t anywhere near as popular but still exists and is large. And effectively owns the profits from ChatGPT’s growing foray into search. Basically every Google competitor uses the bing index under the hood.

MS owns an ad network that brings in ~$10Bn a year. Much smaller than Google, but certainly nothing to ignore.

MS owns outlook/hotmail which is wildly popular.

Does Microsoft own “half the internet”? No but neither did Google. Microsoft does own Windows which is a (already sued) monopoly touch point similar to Android. They own a browser. They own a cloud platform that profits from a growing internet. They own plenty of consumer facing properties and should not be written off in monopoly or antitrust discussions.

Personally, I don’t know if I agree with the idea of spinning off Chrome (but I know Googlers so I may be biased), but I understand the appeal on paper.


> No but neither did Google.

"Google Analytics is used by 82.5% of all the websites whose traffic analysis tool we know." https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics

Google's adware is all over nearly every site on the internet.

I don't even know what the real-world equivalent would be: maybe if you had to drive to the NYSE in an NYSE-provided vehicle (that could track your behavior to judge how much money you were likely to spend) in order to buy shares from the NYSE who sat on the other side of every trade in addition to running the market.


That is how the NYSE works in my mind lol. Aren't you describing payment for order flow?


Let's hope it won't be Oracle.

ehm... jokes aside. I think a more reasonable way is to setup a foundation, composed of biggest players in tech, also companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, Linux Foundation, Apple and EFF. The foundation should steer the further development of Chrome. In that way Chrome will be owned by community just like e.g. Linux Kernel or standards like C++ lang spec.

If Chrome would be bought by a private entity, that entity would probably start milking the current user base straight away. Expect adds in bookmarks bar, more address bar spyware (e.g. sending all phrases to the cloud) and paid extensions web store.

The most used and advanced browser that we have today must stay open source. It is more than a program, it is part of global internet infrastructure. We should not destroy it by a foolish political decision.


Oracle was the front-runner for buying TikTok last time they were under pressure to sell: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54148474

They were the first company I thought of.


I doubt Mozilla would like to be part of a foundation owning another browser.


A consortium of various tech companies, plus non-profits? Instead of it being in one corporate hand. One can dream of the EFF and Mozilla plus a bunch of other stakeholders owning it.


Is Chrome being run so bad that we need even more committees, councils and bureaucrats to implement every single feature ?

Microsoft is already using the Chromium and changing the default search engine to Bing and shipping it as Edge. What else is needed?

This DOJ looks like they just want to pad their resumes with some grandiose case which might be bad for everyone else.


Chrome isn't being run bad because of committee, it's being run bad because it's used by Google as part of their web advertising empire.


Notice how their web advertising empire, which they do have a monopoly on (unlike Chrome), is not being broken up?


There is a separate, ongoing antitrust lawsuit over Google’s adtech business. Closing arguments in that case are scheduled for Nov. 25, next week: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/technology/google-antitru...


Chrome is not run badly at all. But in its current state it gives Google the ability to singlehandedly dictate webstandards. Thats an issue.


That doesn't go away with not Google. It's the result of having a browser with such big market share.


I think the point is to stop adding more features. The web is feature complete, everything Google is adding is just stuff to make them more money through ads and lock in.


That's not true, plenty of great stuff is shipping every year. Take your pick: https://web.dev/series/baseline-newly-available https://web.dev/blog/baseline2023


This is what Microsoft thought when they released IE6, and is why we ended up still supporting IE6 into the 2010s


That is not true at all. Plenty of features added expands the capabilities of what can be built for the browser


is that based on feelings or facts?


There’s nothing wrong at all with adding features as long as more than one browser/engine actually adopts them.


There’s an argument to be made that a high pace of new feature additions effectively functions as a moat that ensures that new competitive web engines cannot be developed as a result of not being able to ever catch up.


Exactly: The part after "as long as" is both critical and hard to ensure.


Oh come on, I for one am excited about the upcoming WebKmem API that allows random websites direct access to kernel memory..


How else are web devs supposed to write kernel modules?


> and Mozilla

So the market/consumers decided (due to whatever reasons) that they don't want to use Mozilla's browser. Lets reward them for that failure by giving them control over someone else's browser?


They don’t have to sell it. They have to spin it off. Which means an independent company with a C suite, RSUs and a P&L.

There’s probably a number of talented people out there who would love to drive that truck.


If the pool they're looking at is "talented people" looking to run a company, it'll be someone who's currently the CEO of 7 other companies and successfully driven each of them into the ground for short term profits, unfortunately.


I love capitalism


Who would like to own the #1 most popular browser in the world?

How is that even a question. It's worth billions. User data, ability to inject ads, ability to drive the future of web and web-based apps.


It’s an open source project that can be forked - especially when google is not behind it to protect the market share, with users that don’t expect to pay and microsoft also involved with their own version.

Currently it’s probably worth bilingual because Google owns it. I expect it to rapidly lose value should that change.


Probably MicroFocus, they seem to buy everything and not do anything with it.

There is no potential buyers for Chrome that are serious and trustworthy. Chrome is not a profit center. Mozilla can't make money on Firefox and seems to be losing interest in the project, probably for the same reason. There's no reason to think that anyone would buy Chrome, keep it freely available and make money on the product.

Worst case is that some one will buy it, slap ads on it or turn it into a subscription service. Still I don't see that being enough to fund the Chromium/Blink development. While I do think the adding of features to the web could do with a slowdown, we're talking Internet Explorer 6 levels of stagnation if Chrome is sold of to the wrong entity.


Mozilla exist standalone, even if technically it depends on Googles money. They do the same, push Chrome to a separate Company, independent of Google, but getting money from who ever pays them the most for integrations and search engine-placments. It would need some additional constraints, but could position it on a more fair situation where there is not this harmful lock-in to google-services, but instead support for all services & companies equally.

Just reducing the direct influence from one company would already be beneficial for the market. And maybe Mozilla and other browser will get something out of it too.


The argument that something is untouchable because it can't continue as a going concern without continuing user-hostile behaviours is unconvincing. It's not our fault Google chose this business model, just as it's not a coincidence Google made it difficult to break up and just distinct enough to be (supposedly, formerly) legally sound.


firefox gets along fine

how it could exist without getting money for setting the default search engine is certainly a question though


Firefox gets along... with money from Google. And I think a good portion of the $$ that Google pays Mozilla, in their mind, isn't to be the default search engine... it's to keep competition alive in order to avoid this situation.


Would you buy an IPO of Chrome? The key supplier of like half of Google's searches? Seems like a no brainer.


> Who would possibly buy Chrome?

Somehow I think that if they will decide to stay in their niche, Cloudflare might be a good fit for Chrome


No one should. It should get an IPO. Chrome will make a lot of money from Google, Bing, ChatGPT, etc by selling default search.


> Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile

Why not? Chrome's team isn't as prone to distracting itself as Mozilla. But there is still a lot of ancillary nonsense they get up to that wouldn't be necessary if it weren't in Google. Starting, for example, with not giving a fuck about how their product impacts ad sales.


Because you need to pay something like 1,000 engineers - and not just any engineers, but engineers used to Alphabet's SF Bay Area salaries and equity packages.

This quickly adds up to billions of dollars. You have the option to massively downsize, likely sacrificing product quality; or to sell something very valuable to a business-mined buyer. And there's really nothing a browser vendor can sell that isn't bad news for the users.

About the best option would be for Chrome to be spun off and then for Google to keep paying them for being the default search engine.


Presumably Google, Bing etc. would still be bidding to be the default search engine?

Google is paying Apple $20 billion per year just for that so financing 1000 engineers (which is probably excessive, a few hundred + contributions from other companies using Chromium might be enough) shouldn't be too hard.


Google paying to be the default search engine was ruled anti competitive.


Was it? Or are they just being investigated over it?


It was. The article's 2nd sentence mentioned the ruling and linked to more information.


Yes technically, but the appeal process will likely drag on for years and the outcome isn't clear (now that Republicans are in charge they might just drop it before that happens anyway).


That seems to work for Mozilla. It would be nice to see other revenue models, but that exists and having the most used browser as a search client should pay at least as good as whatever deal Mozilla and Apple get.


Sort of? Mozilla is not doing well. Further, the only reason Google is paying Mozilla is to keep a notional third-party competitor alive; search traffic from a sub-3% browser is not worth that much. If the Chrome deal goes through, there's really no business reason for Google to keep paying them.


> you need to pay something like 1,000 engineers - and not just any engineers, but engineers used to Alphabet's SF Bay Area salaries and equity packages

Why? I'm arguing you can downsize the portfolio without sacrificing product quality for most users. That should let one get by with fewer engineers and/or ones in lower-cost areas.


Mozilla has ~700 employees just to keep an ailing browser on life support. Brave has ~250 employees, but they're building largely on Google's core engine, so they're getting a ton of engineering for free.

Browsers are massive. I'm pretty sure the complexity is exceeding the complexity of the Linux kernel. You can pull off heroics with fewer people, but if you want to build a company that brings in revenue, has a security team and a privacy team... all of sudden, it's a pretty big enterprise.


I'll buy it for $5, final offer.


IBM? Amazon (that sounds worse)


Maybe Opera would buy it?


ByteDance, or another Chinese company.


Given the current political climate, this is incredibly unlikely. Reference the situation with TikTok and the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act" which became US law earlier this year.


What about X (the everything app)?

Could happen under Trump...


It doesn’t matter if no one buys it, or if it doesn’t even continue to exist as a standalone business. That’s preferable.

The important part is ending the egregious conflict of interest where an advertising behemoth controls access to the internet.

Ideal result is that Chrome ceases to exist and Chromium continues as an independent open source project controlled by a nonprofit. Even if Google is one of the contributors, so long as they don’t control the product they will exert a lot less control over the web and how people access it.

TLDR just be like Mozilla


What would that even mean? Anyone can fork Chromium and do whatever they want including establishing a non-profit foundation to finance its development.

Should Google be banned from forking an open source project and/or just developing any type of browser at all?

The only reason Google "controls" Chromium is that they are spending the most money/development time on it.


Yes, Google can be forced to sign a consent decree saying it will not engage in browser building or distribution for a set length of time and the DOJ can set up offices inside of Google and staff them with DOJ employees who make sure Google follows that agreement.

It seems like you have no familiarity with any of this. If so, happy to help educate you. If I'm wrong and you're just trolling, it was hard to tell.


To the users who use chrome, it will matter. Not clear to me how strong Chromium will be if the Google efforts for Chrome go away.


> TLDR just be like Mozilla

Please don't.

Do we really want incompetent management going into ad business? Declining market share, while raising management salaries and firing developers?


> TLDR just be like Mozilla

Mozilla is rapidly deciding they want to be an advertising and AI company at the expense of their primary product.

So, tl;dr: be like Mozilla used to be, not like they are now.


I don't like Mozilla's advertising strategy either. But their primary product can't sustain itself.


I desperately wish they'd give me the option to pay for Firefox Sync. I would, genuinely, pay for that every month. I get a massive amount of value from being able to throw tabs from my laptop to my phone and vice versa, and have everything synchronized, in a way I trust.


Did you mean people could sync and not pay? Few people would pay. Or did you mean people would have to pay to sync? The market standard is free sync.

You can give money to Mozilla Corporation by paying for Firefox Relay, Mozilla Monitor, Mozilla VPN, MDN Plus, or Pocket Premium.


A browser can't sustain itself. That's kind of the core problem.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: