Fuck yeah. I've been calling for this for years. Please break out Chrome. I know quite a few people that work there and I worked there myself. I'm the only one I know amongst us that feels this...
Fuck yeah. I've been calling for this for years. Please break out Chrome.
I know quite a few people that work there and I worked there myself. I'm the only one I know amongst us that feels this way. It's probably a matter of the old Upton Sinclair quote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I do understand the sentiment, at the same time I am wondering where an independent Chrome would find the revenue for further development. Which I think is a valid question considering the...
I do understand the sentiment, at the same time I am wondering where an independent Chrome would find the revenue for further development. Which I think is a valid question considering the struggles Firefox is facing and how much of their revenue actually comes from Google.
Android I would be slightly less worried about, if they get to keep the play store and services, which would set them up nicely as far as revenue goes.
Part of me also wonders what would happen with services like Gmail. I have set up my own domain a few years ago and have been moving most important accounts and contacts to there. But a scary amount of people heavily depend on Gmail. Which actually is a good indicator of how dominant Google is in many people's digital life, but also why it worries me. So if it comes down to Google being split up, I really hope it is done in such a way that it ensures services like these are not jeopardized.
I can't think of any times Google abused their ownership of Gmail. And probably because email is so old it's less of a concern here. It's a properly federated system. Businesses have lots of good...
I can't think of any times Google abused their ownership of Gmail. And probably because email is so old it's less of a concern here. It's a properly federated system. Businesses have lots of good competitive options to pick from and individuals aren't money makers. They don't show ads in Gmail - although they likely harvest information from your inbox for ads.
Chrome could get revenue the same way Firefox does - through selling the position of the default search engine to the highest bidder, side projects like VPNs and news aggregation, etc. It would be massively scaled down, but if Firefox can run on its current shoestring budget then it's clear you don't need that much money to run a web browser.
I am not saying that they are abusing Gmail, but it would find itself as part of the now separate Google entities, which might change their perspective on maintaining a service that costs money...
I am not saying that they are abusing Gmail, but it would find itself as part of the now separate Google entities, which might change their perspective on maintaining a service that costs money while they now have less of a revenue stream.
Yes, it is a federated system, so in theory people can switch. In practice, if you have had the same Gmail address for years (mine is from 2005) there are a lot of places where your access is tied to you having access to that Gmail address.
I'd argue that Firefox only gets by because Google is willing to pay up for search to this degree. I am not sure if that will maintain to be the case in this future scenario. Not to mention that while Firefox is doing okayish, there are still a lot of rough edges to various aspects of it that Chrome does not. Likely due to choices Mozilla had to make in as far as priorities go.
I am not saying it is all impossible. But, it isn't something that is going to be easy by any means either.
In your opinion, what monetization model make the most sense for an independent web browser? I've reviewed every option I could think of, but I don't love any of them. The first way is include...
In your opinion, what monetization model make the most sense for an independent web browser? I've reviewed every option I could think of, but I don't love any of them.
The first way is include advertisements in the browser itself, as Opera once did. Unfortunately, on the web, ads seem like the only model that has proven to work consistently. I can't imagine that sponsorships and product integrations alone could ever pay for the number of engineers working on the project. And I feel they'd be hard pressed to get people to pay for, or donate monthly for a product that previously was completely free.
Auctioning off the default search engine would also no longer be allowed, due to the antitrust rulings discussed in the article. That's been the only way Mozilla has been able to stay alive thus far. They've been trying to find a new business model for years, but every time they try something: Pocket, Cliqz, sponsored links - their userbase chastises them for it, or flocks to the latest fork of Firefox/Chromium.
Honestly, I'm worried about who's going to pay for all this engineering talent. If users aren't willing to, will web browser teams be stripped down and run as skeleton crews? Will we see a sharp decline in new features, standards work, and security fixes?
Micropayments are conceptually a good idea, but there's no real infrastructure to support them. Transaction fees make them a non-starter, and while cryptocurrency was once touted as a solution to this problem, their use as a speculation investment vehicle has made them completely useless for actual utility. Besides, what would you pay for? Time spent browsing?
I could maybe see browser vendors selling a "Pro" plan, with features such as remote syncing, backing up profile data, or an integrated VPN. Maybe they could also create a storefront for paid extensions and take a cut of each one. That adds infrastructure costs, but at least it gets money flowing. Somehow, they would need to commercialize the browser.
One darker possibility is selling browsing data. Credit card companies have been freely selling access to user's purchasing habits for years. Selling access to anonymized web trends could be one approach to shoring up the lost funds. It might be enough to maintain a small team of developers anyway.
The only other approach I can think of is nationalization. To be adopted by a government and paid for through taxes. It sounds crazy, but the web browser is the most important software installed on any computer. Governments do sometimes take over important utilities like water, electricity, or transportation, and I think the browser could qualify. Might we one day see a world where different governments maintain their own forks of Chromium or Firefox?
So I don't really know where this path might lead. It's difficult to say because we've never really seen browser compete in a real market before. They've always been propped up by another company or revenue stream. And unfortunately when there's no magnanimous benefactor to bankroll the project, they often don't survive. Servo was a promising rewrite but couldn't find its funding, and Opera couldn't cut the mustard and was bought by a Chinese consortium.
It seems like Apple is poised to gain the most here, since Safari will continue to receive the full support of a 3.4 trillion dollar company, while Chrome and Firefox may need to begin fighting for table scraps.
Anyway, I often see people quick to argue for breaking companies up, but I rarely see the consideration of what happens afterwards. I think these are important questions though, and should be considered in evaluating if a breakup would ultimately prove to be a public good or harm.
It definitely needs to be subsidized by countries. At least EU and US depend on it for contact with citizens and for internal systems. I would like UN to have a program where every country would...
It definitely needs to be subsidized by countries. At least EU and US depend on it for contact with citizens and for internal systems.
I would like UN to have a program where every country would provide one person for every million people or so to work on open source public internet infrastructure and related standards.
Plus some money for build servers and stuff like that.
I am all for any breakups the DOJ can manage. There are so many companies I would love to see broken up. I want to give some free advice to the DOJ. If you break up monopolies such that they are...
I am all for any breakups the DOJ can manage. There are so many companies I would love to see broken up.
I want to give some free advice to the DOJ. If you break up monopolies such that they are still monopolies, just smaller monopolies, that kinda doesn’t work. Breaking up Bell into regional monopolies changes nothing. It just means the monopoly I have to pay for phone service covers a few states rather than the entire country.
So don’t bother for example separating Android from search. You have to shatter search into pieces to make it not a monopoly. Yes, it will be painful. But that is the only way to actually address the monopoly.
It looks like the angle is to not only break up Google, but also declaw Android's position by requiring easy access to competing app stores. That would be a huge step and I'd be more than happy...
It looks like the angle is to not only break up Google, but also declaw Android's position by requiring easy access to competing app stores. That would be a huge step and I'd be more than happy with it.
From a technical standpoint breaking out Android is actually relatively easy. It was an acquisition. Android has a big enough code base with a sufficiently different culture that to this day it's a separate monorepo. Everything else is in what's called google3: a monorepo of every other piece of Google code (live, deprecated, and experimental). Android is mirrored there, but the source of truth is separate.
Fuck yeah. I've been calling for this for years. Please break out Chrome.
I know quite a few people that work there and I worked there myself. I'm the only one I know amongst us that feels this way. It's probably a matter of the old Upton Sinclair quote:
I do understand the sentiment, at the same time I am wondering where an independent Chrome would find the revenue for further development. Which I think is a valid question considering the struggles Firefox is facing and how much of their revenue actually comes from Google.
Android I would be slightly less worried about, if they get to keep the play store and services, which would set them up nicely as far as revenue goes.
Part of me also wonders what would happen with services like Gmail. I have set up my own domain a few years ago and have been moving most important accounts and contacts to there. But a scary amount of people heavily depend on Gmail. Which actually is a good indicator of how dominant Google is in many people's digital life, but also why it worries me. So if it comes down to Google being split up, I really hope it is done in such a way that it ensures services like these are not jeopardized.
I can't think of any times Google abused their ownership of Gmail. And probably because email is so old it's less of a concern here. It's a properly federated system. Businesses have lots of good competitive options to pick from and individuals aren't money makers. They don't show ads in Gmail - although they likely harvest information from your inbox for ads.
Chrome could get revenue the same way Firefox does - through selling the position of the default search engine to the highest bidder, side projects like VPNs and news aggregation, etc. It would be massively scaled down, but if Firefox can run on its current shoestring budget then it's clear you don't need that much money to run a web browser.
I am not saying that they are abusing Gmail, but it would find itself as part of the now separate Google entities, which might change their perspective on maintaining a service that costs money while they now have less of a revenue stream.
Yes, it is a federated system, so in theory people can switch. In practice, if you have had the same Gmail address for years (mine is from 2005) there are a lot of places where your access is tied to you having access to that Gmail address.
I'd argue that Firefox only gets by because Google is willing to pay up for search to this degree. I am not sure if that will maintain to be the case in this future scenario. Not to mention that while Firefox is doing okayish, there are still a lot of rough edges to various aspects of it that Chrome does not. Likely due to choices Mozilla had to make in as far as priorities go.
I am not saying it is all impossible. But, it isn't something that is going to be easy by any means either.
I'm saying I don't think they should break out Gmail. I don't see an issue with it as is.
In your opinion, what monetization model make the most sense for an independent web browser? I've reviewed every option I could think of, but I don't love any of them.
The first way is include advertisements in the browser itself, as Opera once did. Unfortunately, on the web, ads seem like the only model that has proven to work consistently. I can't imagine that sponsorships and product integrations alone could ever pay for the number of engineers working on the project. And I feel they'd be hard pressed to get people to pay for, or donate monthly for a product that previously was completely free.
Auctioning off the default search engine would also no longer be allowed, due to the antitrust rulings discussed in the article. That's been the only way Mozilla has been able to stay alive thus far. They've been trying to find a new business model for years, but every time they try something: Pocket, Cliqz, sponsored links - their userbase chastises them for it, or flocks to the latest fork of Firefox/Chromium.
Honestly, I'm worried about who's going to pay for all this engineering talent. If users aren't willing to, will web browser teams be stripped down and run as skeleton crews? Will we see a sharp decline in new features, standards work, and security fixes?
Micropayments are conceptually a good idea, but there's no real infrastructure to support them. Transaction fees make them a non-starter, and while cryptocurrency was once touted as a solution to this problem, their use as a speculation investment vehicle has made them completely useless for actual utility. Besides, what would you pay for? Time spent browsing?
I could maybe see browser vendors selling a "Pro" plan, with features such as remote syncing, backing up profile data, or an integrated VPN. Maybe they could also create a storefront for paid extensions and take a cut of each one. That adds infrastructure costs, but at least it gets money flowing. Somehow, they would need to commercialize the browser.
One darker possibility is selling browsing data. Credit card companies have been freely selling access to user's purchasing habits for years. Selling access to anonymized web trends could be one approach to shoring up the lost funds. It might be enough to maintain a small team of developers anyway.
The only other approach I can think of is nationalization. To be adopted by a government and paid for through taxes. It sounds crazy, but the web browser is the most important software installed on any computer. Governments do sometimes take over important utilities like water, electricity, or transportation, and I think the browser could qualify. Might we one day see a world where different governments maintain their own forks of Chromium or Firefox?
So I don't really know where this path might lead. It's difficult to say because we've never really seen browser compete in a real market before. They've always been propped up by another company or revenue stream. And unfortunately when there's no magnanimous benefactor to bankroll the project, they often don't survive. Servo was a promising rewrite but couldn't find its funding, and Opera couldn't cut the mustard and was bought by a Chinese consortium.
It seems like Apple is poised to gain the most here, since Safari will continue to receive the full support of a 3.4 trillion dollar company, while Chrome and Firefox may need to begin fighting for table scraps.
Anyway, I often see people quick to argue for breaking companies up, but I rarely see the consideration of what happens afterwards. I think these are important questions though, and should be considered in evaluating if a breakup would ultimately prove to be a public good or harm.
It definitely needs to be subsidized by countries. At least EU and US depend on it for contact with citizens and for internal systems.
I would like UN to have a program where every country would provide one person for every million people or so to work on open source public internet infrastructure and related standards.
Plus some money for build servers and stuff like that.
I am all for any breakups the DOJ can manage. There are so many companies I would love to see broken up.
I want to give some free advice to the DOJ. If you break up monopolies such that they are still monopolies, just smaller monopolies, that kinda doesn’t work. Breaking up Bell into regional monopolies changes nothing. It just means the monopoly I have to pay for phone service covers a few states rather than the entire country.
So don’t bother for example separating Android from search. You have to shatter search into pieces to make it not a monopoly. Yes, it will be painful. But that is the only way to actually address the monopoly.
It looks like the angle is to not only break up Google, but also declaw Android's position by requiring easy access to competing app stores. That would be a huge step and I'd be more than happy with it.
From a technical standpoint breaking out Android is actually relatively easy. It was an acquisition. Android has a big enough code base with a sufficiently different culture that to this day it's a separate monorepo. Everything else is in what's called
google3: a monorepo of every other piece of Google code (live, deprecated, and experimental). Android is mirrored there, but the source of truth is separate.SCOTUS has been pretty rough lately, but DOJ has been kicking ass.
FTC too. Fingers crossed the leaders at both survive the administration change.