Google to court: we’ll change our Apple deal, but please let us keep Chrome

Can we just stop and appreciate for a moment what a fucking outrage it is that Google is allowed to negotiate its own punishment at all?

You are allowed to suggest sentencing. This isn’t preferential treatment to Google. Of course, the judge doesn’t have to listen to anybody’s suggestions, but you are definitely allowed to make them.
- "Look I'm guilty as fuck. However, hear me out. I totally learned my lesson and believe that an appropriate punishment of you allowing me to continue my, let's say 'less than legal', business practices is a great punishment! And before you say it, I know! I know! I can also alter the way we operate with one of our millions of partners in a way that will yet again benefit me somehow and skirt legal ramifications for another 25 years. But look on the bright side, I don't want to do any of this...you're forcing me to do it!"

I wish I could get found guilty and still be able to negotiate on equal footing with the prosecution about what my punishment was going to be.

They can keep chrome if they open source everything and remove all tracking, telemetry, and calling home of any sort, artificial crippling of addons via manifestV3, stop blocking blockers, stop injecting ads, stop breaking APIs, stop asynchronous and default DNS, stop forcing safebrowsing (URL monitoring).

What else have I missed?

They would still have disproportionate control over web standards. They should not be allowed to keep Chrome/Chromium under any circumstances.
- I still don’t see how a standalone web browser survives financially. It seems like Firefox is always near death and has to make compromising decisions. Do you have any thoughts on how this ought to work?
pushing web standards in their user-hostile favour
I’m guessing they would not be interested in keeping Chrome under those conditions. Those are all things that give them leverage, which is the reason they need to split
..... And most importantly, stop making it default browser in the most popular OS in the planet.

We don’t need to pay bribes to stay the default search engine so long as we get to keep making the monopolist browser that bans adblockers.

Three years isn't nearly long enough. Chrome needs to go, as does their dominance in search, android, YouTube and email. That cannot all be one company, under a giant advertising umbrella. Split them up into three companies. Chrome and advertising cannot stay together.

we cannot have android under another big tech company

It's a miracle that Google botched messengers, Google+, cloud ('member app engine?). They could have been even more dominant. I still like them more than MS and FB.

Ye they're not the worst. I'd def pick then over apple for example, at least makes android which is sick
- M chip MacBooks are pretty sweet. Especially if you want Xcode.

no.

Normally I would laugh at them offering to resolve a second case to avoid judgement in the first one, but sadly they probably have enough influence to make it happen.

I really want apple to switch to duckduckgo or ecosia as default now.

Startpage is also an option.

FFS the Chrome thing is nothing even. Who would even want it?

it's a huge deal for google. they control the browser used by the vast majority of users, and the engine behind the one (such as edge, opera, vivaldi, etc) used by still more. they rely on those users to see and interact with ads to make money.

besides the obvious--driving traffic to their web properties that have their ads; they get to siphon off all that sweet user data which makes their ads 'more valuable', and control addon functionality and restrictions as well as the primary 'marketplace' where those addons come from. their ultimate goal of killing off ad blockers completely, the limits mv3 puts on adblockers is just the next step in that direction.

should a third-party acquire control over chrome's development, mv3 gets shredded. restrictions and limitations on adblockers get scaled-back or reverted outright.
- should a third-party acquire control over chrome's development, mv3 gets shredded. restrictions and limitations on adblockers get scaled-back or reverted outright.
  
  That is far too optimistic. If the courts force a sale then a for profit company will but it expecting a return on investment. Which very likely means more monetisation efforts like embedding ads or even more tracking built into it. It is a fantasy to think who ever gets it will scale anything you dislike about it back.
- it also allows them to push web standards in whatever direction they feel like
- All good points, but even without Chrome they became one of the biggest companies in the history of Earth. Even without Chrome they'll still have Android and will undoubtedly spit out a Chromev2 browser experience that suckers will flock to - and even without Chrome they'll still likely control all of that search traffic.
  
  Hey if it kills their fingerprinting plans, I'm all for it, but are they going to be prevented from developing a browser? That's like not being allowed to develop a car. Which - again, fine by me, but still unlikely.
Chrome, as the damn-near-monopoly rendering engine, gives Google hegemony over web standards. That's incredibly valuable because it puts them in a position to (e.g.) inflict DRM on the world.
- Fair point.
Their desperation to hold onto it speaks volumes about how valuable it is to them. I’m sure they get tons of juicy browsing data that they don’t want to give up.
- Yes but how will some other company who doesn't run a successful ad network make aenough money from owning Chrome browser to keep it going?
It's a good question because maintaining a modern web browser is a complicated and expensive project, which any potential buyer would have to sustain financially somehow. Chrome without the integrated ad service business would probably be highly unprofitable - so why would any business take it on?

The only real answer I can come up with is pretty ugly: data mining. Lots of services are dependent on Chrome that can't just move to a new platform on short notice. Chrome is not just the web browser, it's also the web engine for most mobile apps (a lot of apps are just stripped-down Chrome with a hard-coded server target).

Chrome has basically sucked all the air out of the room for other browser projects, so maybe taking it away from Google will create some space for new projects to grow... but it's hard to see any of them becoming well-developed and trustworthy for things like health data, government services, financial transactions &etc anytime soon.
- but it’s hard to see any of them becoming well-developed and trustworthy for things like health data, government services, financial transactions &etc anytime soon.
  
  I honestly don't See the Relation to Chrome.
  
  You're suggesting that a PWA running on Firefox isn't suitable for this?

I don't get the boner the feds have for making Google sell Chrome. Maintaining a browser looks like a huge investment and as bad as Google is, there are much worse companies that would jump at the chance to buy it. Imagine some Tencent-tier corporation making you pay to have the ability to install extensions.

Google can Set Standards to their own Advantage, e.g. with regards to Tracking which reinforces their Monopoly on Things Like Ads, the Same reason they crippled all the AdBlockers with ManifestV3 on Chromium-based Browsers

And the only alternative that isn't Chromium-based is Firefox. (Or Safari with WebKit). All other Browsers use Chromium

So it would be really good for everyone if they were forced to sell Chrome
- So it would be really good for everyone if they were forced to sell Chrome
  
  And who do you think would buy it? Loads of companies will be jumping at the chance not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they can see massive profits if they can control it. Very likely will start to squeeze it for all the profit they can and the enshitification process will begin.
  
  For all the bad the Google has done they have kept chrome relatively free from the enshitification process. Likely as so much of their business would not exist if people didn't have a good browser to access their services on.
- Chrome's ubiquity is bad for browsers.
  
  I'm glad I switched back to Firefox after learning that Google removed AdNauseam from their addon store. It's an app that clicks ads in addition to blocking them. It wasn't breaking any rules, but google removed it and since there wasn't sufficient backlash it was never restored.
  
  That kind of scummy behavior should never be rewarded with continued patronage.
- Any company can do that. That's why it's more important to have new browsers (THAT AREN'T CHROMIUM, LOOKING AT YOU EDGE) for competition. Making a company sell the browser used by the majority of people is absolutely not the answer. That's gambling.