[hilbert42]

"Who would possibly buy Chrome?"

This is illustrates the extent and magnitude of the problem to fix the internet. That regulators failed to give enough oversight of the internet and to regulate its monopolistic players several decades ago when these problems first became obvious has meant that they are now almost insurmountable.

Ideally, Google would be forced to divest itself of Chrome and that Chrome would become an open source project a la Linux. Clearly, that's very unlikely to happen.

For those who'd argue that Chrome would have no funding to further develop I'd respond by saying that it already works well as a browser and from observation that Google is channeling most of Chrome's development funds into anti-features that are hostile to users.

As an open source project that level of funding would be no longer necessary and its future development could progress at a slower pace.

[sangnoir]

> Ideally, Google would be forced to divest itself of Chrome and that Chrome would become an open source project a la Linux. Clearly, that's very unlikely to happen.

Chrome's upstream (Chromium) is already open source. If Google is forbidden from sponsoring Chromium's development, and that of its proprietary downstream distribution (Chrome) who's going to fund Chromium's development? Even if forced to divest, Google will always have an outsized sway on any open source browser due to the engineer-hours they can spend on contributions. If they are blocked from even that, then the whole exercise would be anti-consumer IMO.

[hilbert42]

If Google were forced to divest itself of Chrome and there were no takers then Chromium would take on an altogether different perspective. That Chromium exists shows there's already an existing infrastructure that would make transitioning to it relatively straightforward.

Incidentally, I don't use Chrome, only Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers.

[wepple]

> That Chromium exists shows there's already an existing infrastructure that would make transitioning to it relatively straightforward.

I think there’s a very very substantial underlying infrastructure maintained and funded by google that would disappear. This isn’t a GitHub project where you can clone and make install.

[Workaccount2]

The fundamental core problem with the internet is that users have an innate feeling that they have a right to view content without being charged for it.

Google's entire existence is predicated on the ad-model internet existing, and internet users have overwhelmingly voted for this model of internet over the last 30 years.

People hate ads, but they hate opening their wallet even more.

[underlipton]

Much as many are loathe to admit it decommercialization of huge swathes of the internet is, in fact, possible. People can make and share things without a financial incentive, and if that means that we have to reckon with the dysfunctional nature of the status quo - millions of livelihoods dependent on the grace of a few megacorporations - maybe that's a good thing (in the long run). Or, I guess we can just let the Attention-Industrial complex swallow everything without a fight.

[liopleurodon]

may as well just discontinue it then and let Chromium take its place

[hilbert42]

Yeah, but if Google were forced to divest Chrome then parts of its proprietary code would have to be open-sourced and integrated into Chromium to minimize disruption to users. Alternatively, Google would have to make its services more interoperable.

[blitzar]

Or bundle all the prop code and services into a plugin for chromium.

[hehehheh]

An internet tax could pay for it.