Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, says the DOJ is pushing “a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.”
I’m honestly curious how this would “harm Americans”.
Google pretending they have any other nationality other then “the global internet” is cute in a disgusting way.
That statement is technically true.
The billionaire owners are Americans.
Everyone really does need to have that at the forefront of their mind. When the C-suit, wall street, and politicians talk about “Americans” they aren’t talking about us schlubs.
The corporations are people too!
I refuse to call any Billionaires Americans. A billionaire in America has far more in common with a billionaire in Ireland or France than with working class Americans. They don’t use our schools, drink our water, drive our roads, or rely on our safety nets. They don’t take out the trash, do their laundry, wait 6 months for a doctor’s appointment, or stress over defunding their retirement to pay for needed medication.
Billionaire involvement in politics should be considered foreign interference. Of course AIPAC is foreign interference too, but apparently that’s not a problem either.
Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer sounds like Donald Trump
I fear this is exactly who they’re courting.
It harms wealthy asshole Americans at Google.
The same ruling would ban Google from paying other browsers to make Google the default search engine.
This would kill Firefox and make Chromium the only browser engine that’s left.That’s really sad…
It would leave the newly-split-off chrome in the same financial situation as firefox. Arguably a worse one.
…a radical interventionist agenda…
That language seems very “Trump-esque”, and I doubt it is a coincidence.
How does chrome make money? It uses ads from Google, chrome on it’s own is not a business.
Say you buy chrome, you have to options
-
Ads built into chrome itself (when you’re in the settings menu, homepage, reading a PDF, playing the dino game)
-
Force your own default search engine, or get a company like Google or Bing to pay you for the privilege of being a default search engine.
Neither of these options are better than the status quo
-
This is the last antitrust win we’ll get for years, isn’t it?
I know Trump doesn’t like Big Tech, but I doubt his admin will punish them meaningfully, but just rail about censorship.
This isn’t a win I think. They are yet to meet in the court with Google.
The DOJ will file a revised version of its proposals in early March, before the government and Google return to the DC District Court in April for a two-week remedies trial.
I keep saying this. In 2 months all this antitrust stuff goes out the window. If people actually bothered to show up on 11/5 Kahn and co could actually get some wins for the American people. Instead, we’re going to get more monopolies shoved down our throats.
Microshit treatment incoming IMHO
People larp these headlines too much
Our govt is pay for play at this point, I struggle to see anything like this going through, especially so close to a new AG appointment.
Ehh just fight it for a month pay king trump some money and bam their golden.
This is exactly what will happen. Same thing with Albertsons and Kroger too.
Okay but consider them taking this moment to let Elon buy it and using it to control information on the clients end 💀
Maybe we’ll actually see people switch to Firefox if that happens.
We all know this wouldn’t happen.
Yup, I guess I just revel in disappointment.
That would end the internet/world.
Google ditched their “don’t be evil” motto, so yeah, this is on the table.
The fact that this is TOTALLY WITHIN REALM OF REALITY is PROOF that Trump is Draining The Swamp!
If they’re allowed to choose who they sell it to this won’t change anything
I think they should sell it to me.
4 $ Final Offer
Too much for me, I’m out 🏳️
Sell it to Mozilla so they can make it uninstall itself and install Firefox instead in the next update
imagine they sell it so some random homeless guy in Australia for 1 cent
Just…please for the love of whatever diety do Microsoft. Fucking sick of their shit recently with One Drive.
Do you have a few minutes to learn about our lord and savior Linux?
Man the Linux propaganda is STRONG on Lemmy. I’ll say what I’ve said before: I use my computer for gaming, web browsing, and managing a media server for my family that hosts pictures and other things. If those 3 things can be done easily without issue on a Linux distro without having to fuck around with configs every time I want to do something, I’m all in. By what I’ve heard though it’s just not there yet. I am super happy Steam decided to go Linux for their Steamdeck though as I’ve heard thats helped make monumental strides the right direction. Trust me, I want to. Large part of it is I worked tech support for over a decade and having to troubleshoot my own shit is like the furthest thing I want to deal with haha
Just going to say, I do those things too, on Linux, and while I can’t say I never have to mess with config files, it’s not frequent. And, the computer acting like it’s my computer rather than on loan from a megacorp is nice.
It’s not all the way there yet but it’s so very close and the bits that are still pain points aren’t nearly as bad as the pain points of Windows.
As the other commenter said, you should give it a serious try. Mint is very smooth overall.
Appreciate it! Thank you!
You owe it to yourself to try it out! I recommend dual booting into Linux Mint Cinnamon for a while and have your windows install to fall back on to. That or one of the gaming-specific distributions, but from what I’ve seen Mint does all with gaming too. It’s a good all-around starting place, and there are a lot of resources because it’s popular and built off of the most popular distro. I installed it on my work machine (software engineering) and I’ve felt no lack of capability or a need to switch to a more “hardcore” distro.
Thanks! Appreciate the type up and suggestion. I’ll add it to my list of ones to try out.
Hey I will give my anecdotal recent experience. Several months ago I switched to Pop! OS and have had basically no issues. I have an Nvidia GPU and I play a lot of games. I don’t play any games that are blocked by anti cheat (not because I can’t, I just don’t happen to play the few that are blocked).
I spent the first day getting everything signed in, installed, set up and tweaked to how I like it with very minimal terminal usage. Mostly gui and clicking.
Steam+Proton along with lutris makes it easy to play any game for me.
Side note: I have 4 monitors of varying resolution, size, orientation and refresh rate and it hasn’t caused problems other than the initial setup (I used cursr to help with this)
Oh God I didn’t even think about monitors. I only have one but it’s the stupid big ultra wide by Samsung. I honestly play most games in windowed. Wondering if there’s resolution support on the actual os though. The rest is like…5120 x something.
One monitor will be fine no matter the resolution.
I’m running Ubuntu and never had an issue with 5120x1440 on a stupid big ultrawide AOC.
Okay great! Good to know, thanks!
If you can live without games having invasive anticheat, then everything should be doable, and probably a lot easier than in Windows.
Yeah not really into multiplayer competitive games. Indo play a lot of co op though. Will have to find a list somewhere.
Proton DB is the place to go. But I don’t check 99% of games I play, unless it’s going to be an expensive purchase and I want to check before I buy. I also don’t bother with people’s suggested tweaks on proton db unless I actually personally experience issues. The only game I’ve had to tweak so far has been cyberpunk 2077.
Edit: added context, I’m on 2 monitors and one of them is an ultrawide. Never had any issues that aren’t similar to issues I’ve experienced on Windows in the past.
Okay awesome thank you!
All mega corps but it won’t happen
Microsoft is waaay easier to avoid than fucking google. Is one drive that annoying?
I feel like Trump’s probably going to axe whoever is finally tackling these monopolies, unfortunately.
What changed with OneDrive? I’m genuinely interested because I’m a user and haven’t noticed anything.
On corp side and personal if you don’t have One Drive setup MS will spam notifications to set it up, and when you go to save will try to default to One Drive as opposed to local.
What company could actually afford to buy it other than Google, Meta, or Amazon? Unless they are forced to sell it at a loss, which is fine with me.
By “sell,” they could also mean ending up having Chrome just split off from Google, as a new, independent entity that is its own company, without anybody needing to buy it in the first place.
How exactly is this company going to make any money?
I assume by continuing to sell data.
Selling user data, selling ad placement, subscriptions for paid services, enterprise-grade support contracts, and the like.
They could also take an approach similar to Google, branching back out from being just a browser into a suite of related tools that Chrome can then convince users to switch to (similar to how Chrome gets users to not just use Google search, but also services like Gmail too.)
The judge would immediately shut that down for creative avoidance. This is an order to sell, not break up. The DOJ specifically indicated behavioural remedies in this case, meaning Google must not remain in control of Chrome.
This is an order to sell, not break up.
Currently, it’s still recommended actions to the court. Nothing has actually been finalized in terms of what they’re going to actually end up trying to make Google do.
Google must not remain in control of Chrome.
While divestiture is likely, they could also spin-off, split-off, or carve-out, which carry completely different implications for Google, but are still an option if they are unable to convince the court to make Google do their original preferred choice.
A split-off could prevent Google from retaining shares in the new company without sacrificing shares in Google itself, and a carve-out could still allow them to “sell” it, but via shares sold in an IPO instead of having to get any actual buyout from another corporation.
Don’t ya love it when people comment saying something that they think must be true as if it were actually true, without having the slightest idea?
Hear me out… Valve
With all due respect for Valve, they don’t need this. They exist in their niche, and they’re exceptionally good at doing their work
Chromium engine for half life 3
Valve already use CEF extensively in their client
Oracle, sun, tencent, tita…
oracle would create MANGO (Microsoft,Apple,nvidia,google and Oracle)
Broadcom
Microsoft is probably drooling at the prospect. They’ve been trying to get that IE monopoly back since this happened to them.
Elon Musk
Don’t fucking let Musk buy it though
Oh no.
They should force it to become a worker cooperative. It’s the only solution that doesn’t allow for corruption
brOURser comrade.
Nationalize?
For a lot of things yes.
However I do not want to use a browser developed by the US gov tyvm
how about the tuvalu government?
My comment is more in line with the corruption aspect. As much as I think they deserve it, giving it to the employees would be more akin to them winning the lottery. In the space of a year, they will have gone public, shareholders would have stormed in and we would be at square one.
Nationalisation at least has a chance of getting rid of the money corruption aspect. Sadly, the three letter agencies are probably deep in every browser already so I don’t think any solution takes care of that.
I understand your point though. Personally, I will never use chrome no matter what happens, ha.
Yep, nationalize everything that’s essential or at least offer a nationalized alternative and let the private sector try to compete.
I literally salivate at the thought of it happening to the telecom industries.
People wondering what Chrome has to do with a search monopoly:
The obvious benefit is that they can default the user’s search provider to Google.
But the more nefarious benefit is that, by controlling both the client and server, they can unilaterally decide the future of web standards. They don’t have to advocate for proposals, gain consensus, and limit themselves to well-supported standards the way other companies do. They can just do it, gain the first-mover advantage, and force others to follow suit.
If they don’t like HTTP/2, they can invent their own protocol and implement it for their search servers and Chrome. Suddenly, using Chrome with Google Search is way faster than using Chrome with Bing or using Firefox with Google Search. Even if Microsoft and Mozilla don’t like the protocol, they now have to adopt it or fall behind.
This has happened. QUIC was deployed in 2012. Firefox gained support in 2021.
They’re doing the same thing with Privacy Sandbox, and you can also look at browser feature compatibility tables to see how eager Google is to force their own interpretation of every not-yet-finalized web standard as the canonical interpretation.
Step 1: Buy Chome
Step 2: End development
Step 3: ???
Step 4:
Profit?Non-Profit Firefox?sell it to Microsoft so they can finally have a web browser that people use
Yes, the anti-trust lawsuit should culminate in one part of a tech giant being sold to another tech giant.
what else would happen
Never again
Imagine where the software industry would be without all the lost productivity because of MSIE quirks.
Microsoft run Chrome clone? But they already have Edge
Which no one willingly uses
it was good at launch, but they’ve added so much bloat
Unless you’re at a company using Microsoft services, where you have no choice, other than chrome (at my company), which hot take, is worse than edge.
I use it and love it tbh
How fucking dare you have an opinion!
I just used my brain this time. Not again!
You need to get out more
Like what?
Sounds like they are preparing for this by killing off ChromeOS
https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-3500661/
Another thing to add to the google graveyard.
It says they are doing it to compete with iPad. Weird. Aren’t tablets sales across all brands constantly declining?
Android is also on the chopping block
There’s literally so much else they should do, google docs, sheets, drive, phones, maps, earth, calendar, play store, translate, etc.
Good work, continue please.What is the issue with docs, sheets, drive, phones, calendar, play store?
There seems to be plenty of options in all of these spaces. Play store isn’t even on a lot of android devices.
Correct. My example for another necessary intervention would be YouTube. That’s a space in which Google does have a monopoly.
Most definitely. They need viable competition.
Exactly. There are workable alternatives to most of the others, but YouTube has a stranglehold on that type of content due to the network effect. Examples of alternatives:
- docs/sheets/drive - Microsoft Office 365, OnlyOffice, or self-host LibreOffice Online (through Collabora CODE builds); if you just need drive, there’s also BackBlaze, AWS, DropBox, etc
- phones - I use GrapheneOS on their Pixel devices, but plenty of other Android phones support LineageOS/DivestOS/CalyxOS
- calendar - still looking for a replacement for my smart watch, but I’ve been using my Nextcloud install; there are also some FOSS calendars that support CalDav as well, so look around
- maps - I’ve been using Organic Maps, which has been great; main problem is searching for addresses, but if it’s in there, the directions so far have worked fine; there’s also Apple maps, Bing maps, and probably some others
- translate - it’s built in to Firefox, and it seems to work well enough in a pinch
But there’s really not much for YouTube. I guess there’s Odyssee, Rumble, and a few others, but they don’t have anywhere near the content as YouTube, so they’re not really practical alternatives. I actually sub to Nebula which is the closest to a replacement so far, but there’s still a ton of content that doesn’t have a direct replacement there.
Off topic, but how do you like graphene? I am thinking of making the switch on a pixel 7a, but I have a fear it’ll be like having Linux on my phone where things randomly don’t work and then I have the hobby where I make it work
I really like it, but I also mostly use F-Droid apps. You can install Google Play in the regular app sandbox, which prevents the worst of the issues andn provides most of the benefits.
That said, there are still some caveats:
- NFC payments don’t work - I use a Pixel watch instead, which works fine (it’s paired to a separate profile on my phone with Google Play installed)
- some banking apps don’t work (some check if your phone OS is stock)
- some apps just don’t work without Google Play services running (e.g. the Sensi app for my smart thermostat), and some have issues even with it running
But other than that, it works pretty well! I have three profiles set up:
- Owner - default, with no Google Play
- Work - handful of work apps using my work Google account
- Google - apps that require Google Play, using a fresh Google account
I’m using a Google Pixel 8, and it does what I need it to do.
Sell it to me, I’ll buy it for one dollar.
I’ll go treefitty
Hot take: they sell Chrome but keep Chromium.
Seeing how tech illiterate some of these people are, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what ends up happening
How would that work exactly? Google would sell Chrome but keep paying teams if developers to work on Chromium?
Basically. I mean look at Edge, it’s running Chromium under the hood, but the UI is developed by Microsoft.
