DOJ to ask judge to force Google to sell off Chrome, Bloomberg News reports
neuters.de
The U.S. Department of Justice will ask a judge to force Alphabet's Google to sell off its Chrome internet browser, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the plans.

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

  • btaf45@lemmy.worldEnglish
    112·
    1 month ago

    What’s to stop them just making another browser?

    Nothing. Chromium is open source. So they could just fork it and declare a new “official” google browser and it would be a lot like Chrome.

    I’m not sure why the govt thinks forcing google to give up a particular fork/branch of an open source browser is all that meaningful. It might make more sense if Chrome was a closed source one of a kind browser.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10·
      1 month ago

      I’ve worked in the aftermath of DoJ agreements like this one. The DoJ is not stupid (or at least didn’t used to be) and will have stipulations about removing Google employees from governance/write permissions to the project, with follow up check-ins every few months to make sure any shenanigans aren’t occurring.

      …none of that matters though now that the DoJ is going to be dissolved.

      • azuth@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        They need to ban them from forking the browser. Google has the ability to get people to install the new Google totally-not-chrome browser. Especially if they keep Android as well.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      That’s exactly what I was thinking. It also makes Chrome essentially worthless to anyone except Google.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Maybe as a whole package, but node.js servers are ubiquitous and have a ton of stakeholders that have nothing to do with web browsers.

              • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                2·
                1 month ago

                The JavaScript (code) engine that powers Chrome is the same JavaScript (code) engine that powers Node servers. Node is used to power a large portion of web applications and internal corporate tools. The Chromium/Node project is under the tight control of Google engineers.