94 points

to me, shaving Android off their business (suggested next step if this fails) would be way more impactful

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66 points

Why not both!

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3 points

good point, I guess one worry here is about the way in which this will affect Firefox (note Firefox here, not the Mozilla Fdn who have managed to Elon their own thing without help, seemingly)

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17 points

I think Google is putting their eggs in one basket (Android) in preparation for them selling off chrome. They are already killing ChromeOS.

https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-3500661/

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6 points

Android also becoming chrome OS in light of recent news of developing Android desktop mode and native Android compatibility with Linux apps, looks like they make hybrid OS that could do it all

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35 points

I’m worrying that whatever gets sold (Chrome or Android) might end up in the hands of someone even more scummy than Google.

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2 points

Is there any company more scummy than Google?

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14 points

Oracle?

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8 points

Chiquita and Nestlé come to mind. Within tech industry, I’d say Amazon and probably Microsoft are worse as well, and there’s probably a ton of potentially even worse companies lurking in the shadows outside the top of the economic food chain.

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3 points

I don’t know man. There’s a lot shittier business practices out there than paying to be the default search engine - which is laughably easy to change on any browser. Like marketplaces and services that pay to be exclusive sources of content and then use the fact that they’re the only source for most content to force extortionate deals on content creators and enshitify every aspect of the end user experience. Just to name one.

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2 points

All the big ones constantly trade blows for the no 1 spot.

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9 points

They would have to be more scummy and also at least similarly competent… Google can’t innovate for crap, but they’re pretty good at maintaining projects (when they don’t randomly kill them off)

If they stop work on chromium, or belief in the stewardship of chromium wanes, it’ll fragment the ecosystem again. Which is sorely needed at this point - we need to get back to standards and away from centralized control

Imagine Twitter/musk acquires them. Microsoft, Apple, and many other big companies directly or indirectly rely on a chain now controlled by a group known for mismanagement - are they going to wait and see, or are they going to diversify?

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2 points

Chrome, brought to you by Palantir, heck, what if Musk bought it?

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3 points
*

if Google was to sell Android that would be like a nuclear bomb dropping. I mean aside from budget Android phones people are going more and more to apple devices just because of the stability.

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And what’s to stop it from continuing to monopolize search engine usage just because it’ll be owned by another company? Wouldn’t whoever purchases it just continue operating it the same way, banking on the name recognition?

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2 points

MS is both wet and salivating right now.

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13 points

The buyer of chrome could make bing the default search engine and re-enable whatever broke Ublock origin (the ad blocker)

They could also cripple gapps and gmail a bit. It would also be harder for google to unilaterally develop new web standards.

That would no doubt consternate a few at Google and knee cap them forcing web shit down our throats that only improves their ad business.

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36 points

If Google does not set the price for 200 trillion USD and it can be really bought, then it will be probably M$ and they will change the search engine to Bing and integrate Coplilot or whatever the fuck it is called now into it.

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30 points

Pretty sure that would count as monopoly as well and the sale wouldn’t be approved.

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17 points
*

And I was pretty sure them aquiring Activision Blizzard would count as monopolizing but here we are.

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12 points

Did you consider that Microsoft lawyers said prices wouldn’t go up? Cause they did, they did say that, which is why the merger was approved. Do you think lawyers can just lie? Don’t you think it’s much more fair now that companies can make pinky promises that prices won’t go up before they become more monopolistic. That’s just good business for both customers and businesses /s

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5 points

Imagine being a monopoly and still being 3rd place out of three in your field.

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5 points

Good news, but does someone more knowleagable of these things know the likelihood of a Trump DOJ derailing this? I am hopefully as the original case was brought in 2017 under Trump, and his relationship with Big Tech is at best strained, but I truly don’t know what to expect moving forward.

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5 points

according to Cory doctorow (pluralistic), trumps gouvernement will likely selectively enforce antitrust, so the Google case would go through, but cases against, say, tesla would be dropped.

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