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.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      91·
      1 month ago

      Not needed. Internet Explorer existed for years after the 90s. It wasn’t killed by the courts. It was killed by the fact that it’s only function was to install a better browser on first boot.

      • cdf12345@lemm.eeEnglish
        9·
        1 month ago

        I think you are severely underestimating how many people don’t even understand the difference between windows, explorer, a web browser and even the Internet itself during the 90’s well into the 2000’s even 2010’s.

        That’s who kept IE alive

        • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 month ago

          No offense but it was the US Government. Most of their websites were coded for it, and quite a few of them didn’t work properly or reliably in other browsers as a result. This was true up until it was sunsetted and they were forced to update to Edge and some of the websites still haven’t been properly moved over to Chromium. When the pandemic hit and the Armed Forces had to setup remote work for thousands of people Microsoft basically built them a fork of Teams. The US Government is kind of running hand in hand with Microsoft on a lot of stuff if you just hazard a cursory look.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      They didn’t make the first one! They got it from Apple, who themselves got it from KDE.