[MichaelCharles]

Monopolies are bad. Splitting up monopolies is good for the consumer.

That doesn't mean this makes any sense.

How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive codebase? What profit incentive is there in maintaining Chrome without Google's ad business? What about ChromeOS? How are they going to handle the extensions store and ecosystem? How is this going to impact web standards?

There's just a lot of significant unknowns surrounding this.

[dijit]

in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet

No wonder nobody can compete, loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all.

The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun.

There are no browsers left except the artificial ecosystem of Safari. Firefox is not a blip on the radar.

So, everything is chrome and chrome is the web standard. Having a single private company in charge of what is and what is not web standards is a little bit scary, as, like the cat, they don’t really need to see and serve the needs of the environment. They are fed at home.

[graemep]

It is not the only way to build a browser.

It is the only way to build a browser and push adoption.

The problem is not the lack of direct revenues. It is the lack of marketing budget and control of platforms (Chrome dominates on Android for exactly the same reason Safari does on Apple).

Firefox is a perfectly good browser, but has lost its market share because Google has huge marketing advantage.

[nextlevelwizard]

How much of Mozilla’s budget actually goes to Firefox? Last I checked making a browser wasn’t even on the road map

[bonzini]

There's Mozilla Foundation (where making a browser is not on the road map) and Mozilla Corporation (which makes money by making a browser to finance the foundation).

Mozilla Corporation revenue is about half a billion, most of it coming from Google and only 2% (from what I found) going to the foundation. The foundation gets most of its money from Google as well, but separately, and the foundation's revenue is about 10% of Mozilla Corporation's. So overall over 90% of Mozilla's budget goes to software development and to cost centers that are associated to Mozilla Corporation.

[Certhas]

That vast majority. And Firefox is massively profitable, too (with a rising share of income not coming from google, up to 15% the last time I looked).

Software development was 220 out of a total 425 M$ of expenses. General and administrative coming in second at 108 M$.

I don't know exactly what comparable software companies invest, but assuming that the 220 is entirely SWE salaries this seems appropriate overhead to my mind.

Edit, all of this is 2022:

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...

[bonzini]

> assuming that the 220 is entirely SWE salaries

With 750 employees for Mozilla Corp, that's unlikely. Even if 80% are developers that would be $350,000 salary on average.

[dijit]

good rule of thumb (at least in Europe) is that whatever your developer salaries are, double it to get closer to the actual operational cost.

There's lots of hidden costs, licenses, insurances, computers/servers, email hosting, document editing suites; that's before you get to the big stuff like office space and social contributions. -- then there's managers, HR etc;

Anyway, it's a reasonable rule of thumb. YMMV.

[devjab]

This is how it is in Denmark as well. Here the general rule of thumb is that any non-managing employee is 70-100k in expense a year. For some specialist workers it’a a little higher, but that is the general cost when you include sick days, vacation, cost-centers like HR, IT and so on.

Somewhat ironically that metric is often used to cut-costs on the long term budget at an increased expense to hire tempts when a team is understaffed for whatever reason. (I’m not sure if “temp” is the correct word for when a team of nurses is staffed to only function within the law when nobody is on vacation/sick. It’s what Google translate gives me for “vikar”.)

[rrr_oh_man]

I love how this went from "monopolies are bad" to "fuck cats".

[antonvs]

Cats have a monopoly on suburban predation in many places. When is the DOJ going to step in?

[gryn]

After cats start selling their prey.

[m463]

and televisions. Now you can't get a television that doesn't spy on you because of unhealthy funding driving the price down.

[crabmusket]

> loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all

Ding ding ding. This is a classic monopolist strategy. It poisons the market for any other potential competitors by removing all possibility of profit from the category.

It's kind of eyebrow-raising that more people in this thread don't notice this. And instead just assume of COURSE browsers can't be funded except by a monopolist using it to shore up their surveillance business.

[executesorder66]

Tangent, but I don't understand this argument at all:

> The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun.

Please could you help me understand.

- If they don't _need_ to hunt for food, the frequency of hunting birds should go down (even if they still do it for fun sometimes)

- If they don't need to take risks to get food, why would they then take those same risks now for the purpose of entertainment? (That cancels out any meaning of there no longer being any risk in killing birds, so why mention it at all?)

My understanding is that you are implying that cats not having to kill birds out of necessity leading to them now being able to do it for fun is a bad thing. Is that correct? And if so, I don't follow that logic because of my above two points.

[dijit]

The points you raise would make sense if cats were purely logical, unfortunately they're not and a lot of what makes a cat work is instinct.

- Instinctively, cats will hunt.

- Lack of care about food source will make cats outlast prey who have to leave safe areas to find food.

- Lack of care about food availability can (and has been proven to) cause cats to hunt more often, not less- as the "cost" of going for a hunt is basically zero; there's no consequences for failure and even success is met with satisfaction but no "cost".

Anyway,there's better info on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife

[executesorder66]

Thanks, your second point makes a lot of sense to me, and helped me to understand your point.

The Wikipedia article was also a good read.

[satchlj]

Can you explain the cat thing? Why wouldn't cats who are not fed be forced to kill even more birds?

Is it because they would be focused on more efficient sources of food like mice instead?

[dijit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife

Essentially, in the wild, cats would be forced to hunt based on hunger, so they'd have to pick and choose what to hunt.

Since they're never hungry, they do it based on fun, and they can "out-starve" their prey who may be hiding but have a higher need to eat and thus: leave their safety.

[account42]

> they're never hungry

IME cats are hungry as soon as they have finished their food.

[coretx]

They are predators while they eat too.

[whywhywhywhy]

> in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet

Safari came into the world on a similar timeline so this isn't true

[StilesCrisis]

If you look at the code size and feature set of Safari 1.0, it’s really a different universe from 2024. Web browsers have become miniature OSes. They contain multiple 3D rendering stacks (WebGL, WebGPU), hardware-accelerated 2D compositors, multiple languages that JIT optimize into native code (JavaScript, WASM), and require passing test suites with millions of cases. The bar has been raised massively since Safari came out, largely to user’s benefit, and honestly we mostly have Chrome to thank for it.

[MichaelCharles]

All very good points.

[xp84]

> If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium?

I agree, this is a problem, but there should be a trivial solution: Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day. This money should go into paying to maintain it.

Anything else is perpetuating the Trash Web as it's come to be.

The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is because Microsoft in the 90s was (belatedly) very worried about a world where Netscape held a lot of power, and realized making and giving away a slightly better browser would neutralize this upstart. Everything flowed from that one tactical decision by a couple of execs at MS.

I'd argue that a browser should be a part of the OS or be a paid product, but funding it with ad money from under the same corporate umbrella is a gross practice which promotes things like... Google nerfing adblocker plugins, and Google trying to kill cookies in favor of something only they control. (Although on that last one, by some miracle their hand was stayed and they backed down.)

Of course the DOJ can't ban the idea of a browser funded by ad money (and most are) but separating it from the other side of the business which should have zero say in how it's implemented, that's common sense to me.

[graemep]

> The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is because Microsoft in the 90s was (belatedly) very worried about a world where Netscape held a lot of power, and realized making and giving away a slightly better browser would neutralize this upstart. Everything flowed from that one tactical decision by a couple of execs at MS.

There were free as in beer browsers before IE (although many were free for non-commercial use only).

Chromium is a fork (well, a fork of a fork) of a FOSS browser specifically developed to be a FOSS browser for FOSS OSes (primarily Linux).

[anon-3988]

> Anything else is perpetuating the Trash Web as it's come to be.

unless you ban "Free" products, this is going to keep happening. People seems to think that just because something is "Free" it must therefore cost nothing to make. I mean, downloading Chrome takes 2 minutes max and seems trivial to me? Whats the problem?

People think Youtube should just allow them to watch videos without any ads nor paying any money. Clearly, the consumer is not rational.

[throwinothrside]

Android shares my location more than 14 times a day IIRC. They snoop through every single thing in my life. I can list a bizillion no. Of things. Zero damn given when they are horrible. Let them stop with dark patterns. Then I will start caring.

I pay for all my games, all good services which ainuse. I try and donate to open source project wherever and when I can. But I couldnt care less about FAANG like companies. If they want us to be good to them, let them be good first.

Hell, its just the other day we were talking about Youtube showing ads to paying customers. I really dont care whether a company is big or small. When companies are bad, they just are. That is it. I dont lose sleep over using FreeTube for watching youtube videos for free. Paying will solve issues, yeah right!

Edit: Language

[portaouflop]

Right but companies are perfectly rational actors /s

[runeks]

> I agree, this is a problem, but there should be a trivial solution: Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day.

If getting people to pay for stuff they use were trivial then advertising wouldn't be as big as it is.

[HeavyStorm]

Yeah, OP is naive. Nobody ever paid for browsers, even before IE was a thing (well, nobody I know...).

We also don't pay for open TV which is ad supported.

This isn't a single decision that someone madennn it's actually very natural.

We don't pay for most of the web, not only browsers. Indirect monetization is great because making a consumer open his/her wallet takes a lot, no matter the price.

[paulryanrogers]

Netscape was sold at Babbages in my local mall. Plenty of people bought it. Just like my father bought Telix and Laplink and earlier communication software.

Not knowing anyone who admits to having done something, doesn't mean that thing never happens.

[DaiPlusPlus]

Netscape was free for non-business users before Internet Explorer existed. Netscape was competing with Mosaic, which was free, what with being a product of the NCSA (hence “Mozilla = Mosaic Killer”).

[Buttons840]

Could Chromium be made close source?

It's easy to just say "well, a company should charge money for a browser", but a company is free to write their own browser and charge for it right now. Chromium though, is bound by its open-source license and its copyright is owned by thousands of different contributors.

[pbmonster]

> Could Chromium be made close source?

Sure, it's BSD licensed, all future development could be done closed-source. Note that the name "Chromium" would need to stay with the open source side of the project, so it would be more like a closed fork than a re-licencing.

99% sure you could just keep using the name "Chrome", though, and stop releasing code into chromium instead.

[Buttons840]

So all companies can, right now, make a private fork and start selling it. There's no reason to pay for that right, everyone already has that right.

(I'm, of course, speaking in the context of xp84's suggestion that the browser should cost money. It's a fine idea, but I don't see how it applies here.)

[pbmonster]

You're essentially paying for control over the currently dominant web browser. You're paying for the existing Chrome installation base and to skip an absolute hell of a hiring process. Because forking Chromium and continuing development on your own needs over 100 of extremely narrowly specialized experts.

If you want your project to remain the currently dominant web browser, you better keep developing APIs people love, you better keep doing it faster than your competition can keep up with implementing them, and you better keep dominating the web standards committees.

Doing this from a position of a Chromium fork is orders of magnitude more difficult than just buying Chrome (and then keeping up pumping money into it at the rate Google has been doing).

[xp84]

> If you want your project to remain the currently dominant web browser, you better keep developing APIs people love, you better keep doing it faster than your competition can keep up with implementing them, and you better keep dominating the web standards committees.

Hey look, an incidental collision with my point!

I'd argue that Google specifically doesn't have nearly the obligation to keep doing these things as long as they are the ones who own Chrome, due to how many other things they can do to put their finger on the scales.

For instance, they could do things like:

- Show overwhelming amounts of ads in everyone's Gmail and say "Switch to Chrome for an ad-light experience."

- Or limit YouTube to 360p in non-Chrome browsers.

- Or only show the sponsored Google Search results (no organic) to non-Chrome browsers (let's be honest though, most non-nerds never click non-sponsored results anyway, and could scarcely find them even in the current Search UI).

- Or limit any new features on Google Workspace to Chrome browsers.

Google can maintain the Chrome near-monopoly using leverage from their other monopolies and near-monopolies. And they can use the Chrome near-monopoly to preserve and expand their marketshare of those other products. A very neat virtuous cycle (for Google). I don't think it promotes the health of free markets or consumer choice.

[Numerlor]

> Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day

How do you do this for something that's a basic necessity at this point? There must be a free browser because so many services depend on their user having access to them through one, and browsers aren't in the category of product where you can provide users a basic browser without features and then selling them a better version. If it's not Chrome that's free, any other free issue would inevitably run into the same issue. If not bankrolled by a company, browsers would need to be government funded

[a2800276]

> How do you do this for something that's a basic necessity at this point? ... If not bankrolled by a company, browsers would need to be government funded

You mean like government funded food, housing, health care and other basic necessities?

[creesch]

Exactly, many of which now need to be requested through online portals. I know that the US is oddly a bit backwards in that regard (even though it houses Silicon Valley) but in many other countries in the world they have moved many if not all of these services online.

Making browsers paid would create all sorts of problems for people with lower incomes if not properly considered. Note the last part of the sentence, thank you.

[a2800276]

I didn't make my point clear: that something is a necessity typically doesn't have the consequence that "government" has to provide it. In the general case, people are expected to buy food, pay rent, etc. These things are typically not provided for free or exchange for exposing your personal data. Only in exceptional cases does society step in to cover these expenses.

The argument that browsers somehow "need" to be free because they are a necessity makes little sense. Compare that phone or laptop the browser is running on is not provided free of charge either. A working automobile is arguably a necessity in large parts of the US and I don't see anyone handing out cars.

[creesch]

Yeah, I was afraid it would be replied to through a US pov. A lot of these essentials are actually "handed out" or at least subsidized to some degree for people with lower incomes in many countries.

Of course this could also be done for browser but still would leave people vulnerable.

To get back to the US. So you think it is a good idea to add yet another expense to vulnerable incomes in a country where there is much less of a safety net?

[account42]

Sounds like the government should be funding a browser, at least a basic one.

[hk__2]

> How do you do this for something that's a basic necessity at this point?

The response is further in OP’s comment:

> I'd argue that a browser should be a part of the OS or be a paid product

[Numerlor]

Part of the OS is basically free and the same situation as Chrome, and you can't do paid because basic necessities are done through the browser

[creesch]

> I'd argue that a browser should be a part of the OS or be a paid product

I am getting Microsoft flashbacks now. There is no way that bundling browsers with OSes and making all the others paid will have negative side effects! Oh wait... The 90s just called, it is Netscape and they would like to have a stern word.

[whywhywhywhy]

Would Google still be allowed to fund Mozilla if ad funded browsers are an issue.

[chipdart]

> I agree, this is a problem, but there should be a trivial solution: Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day.

What a brain-dead idea. Having to pay for something does not affect the openness of a platform. You just create a de-facto tax that benefits no one at all.

[zelphirkalt]

If no one can maintain Chromium, well, that's a pity. On the other hand other projects can catch up then, and maybe the web as a whole can take a breather, without Google pushing more and more "standards". That's actually a good reason to do this. I really couldn't care less about Google's ad business. It is a burden on society.

I think it cannot get much worse than it currently is, with one company dictating the web's future and raking in the money from that. So while there are significant unknowns, probably the result will be something at least a little bit better. I am a little worried about Chrome being only fake sold, to some company that is indirectly controlled by Google again.

[maeln]

> What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive codebase? What profit incentive is there in maintaining Chrome without Google's ad business?

As an aside, maybe this is part of the issue. We have been privileged to enjoy some of the most advanced and complex software created for free since basically their inception. Nobody every paid for a web browser.

But then look around the software industry and every software of even remotely similar complexity need to be paid for, or are a kept free due to a convergence of interest of people who can make money out of it (most notably: Linux).

Now, a web browser could be seen exactly the same way Linux is: Many, many, (many!) company makes ton of profit from people have access to a web browser, therefor, they should be fine with paying people to develop it. And in some way, considering that chromium and firefox are open-source, this is what could happen. But it does not really happen. Google is bankrolling both FF and Chromium, and they have basically total control over Chromium development. Who else is even giving remotely even money for 1 FTE for FF or Chromium ? Thing is, no company would do it for Chromium because it is seen as a Google product, so why pay them for something they will do in any case. Company could have financed Firefox, but now that it is the underdog (and that the Mozilla Foundation makes questionable decision), it doesn't seem like a very good investment.

This is in many way crazy to me that almost every tech company heavily really on people having free access to a web browser, yet nobody is really trying to finance one. But I do think it is a political issue, and that, maybe just maybe, separating Chromium from Google would actually give incentive to the rest of the industry to finance the development of a browser that is not directly own by neither of them. Again, some what just like Linux.

[Propelloni]

Without engaging the broader argument...

> Nobody every paid for a web browser.

Sure we did! Back in the day when the choices were Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera, many people -- me included -- paid for Opera. I continued to do so up to version 5 in 2004 or 2006, can't remember, when I noticed that Phoenix aka. Firebird aka. Firefox were good enough for me. Have been a Firefox (and derivatives) user ever since.

[lucideer]

There's an implicit assumption embedded in this comment that the Chromium project is indispensable, whereas I'm unconvinced it's even a net positive at all.

Anyone who follows standards discourse would probably appreciate the prospect of this open source codebase having independent stewards much more than any fears over maintenance resources.

[jdub]

Sounds like a Google problem.

The web existed before Chrome, and will continue to exist afterward.

[leetnewb]

Yes and no. The web may exist, but there is a viable digital alternative to it today, which didn't exist before Chrome - the mobile and app ecosystem. Virtually everybody who uses the web also uses mobile apps, but there are people who only ever use Android or iOS on a handheld device. It is also possible that in losing Chrome, Google will neglect its web properties and focus exclusively on access to services through mobile apps.

[jdub]

(I don't think your analysis makes sense, but...) Hey, if Google loses its advertising cash cow and vacates the web for apps, that'll really open up the web search market too! Great news!

[Talinx]

In the broadest sense Android and IOS are similar to browsers: All are platforms that execute code given in a certain format and have APIs for interacting with the device.

(The browser is different in that it doesn't need a separate download to acquire the code and makes partial code downloads easy. And from search to opening an app is a single click and very quick.)

[leetnewb]

Just thinking through this now, but the ease of authoring content on the web started very early on, whereas publishing new mobile apps on the dominant platforms is highly technical and exclusionary many years in.

Web - available in 1993, content authoring/hosting become available through blogger, wordpress, etc, in about 7-10 years. Authoring tools Frontpage and ColdFusion were available in 1995, Netscape Composer in 1997. In other words, one could build a basic website with a bare minimum of technical knowledge with the help of widely available tools within 5 years of the web becoming available (it would take many more years for the web to become pervasive).

Mobile - It has been 17 years since the iphone was launched, 19 years since Google acquired Android. To my knowledge, there are no easy ways for a non-technical person to author a basic app, let alone one that runs on both platforms.

[pjmlp]

Likewise we used the Internet before someone CERN came up with HTML render application.

[littlestymaar]

> There's just a lot of significant unknowns surrounding this.

That's what happen when you let anomalies like this become the norm. Antitrust actions should have been taken against Google 15 years ago, and at that point it wouldn't have undermined the whole web because back then didn't yet control the entire web (but the trend was clear and that's why action should have been taken).

[MichaelCharles]

I guess that's a fair point.

[Certhas]

Firefox is massively profitable at a fraction of Chrome's marketshare.

[professor_v]

With 81% [1] of their revenue in 2022 provided by Google...

---

[1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...

[Certhas]

Yes, but they have successfully been shrinking that down from 94% in 2016.

Long road towards independence, but moving in the right direction at least.

And the default spot in the search bar is valuable to people outside of Google. Even if we assume that Google is overpaying, Mozilla could keep operating as is with another entity paying significantly less...

[Bombthecat]

And Google will pull out of the deal when they are forced to split off chrome

[iamacyborg]

Why would they? They still want people to use Google Search vs other alternatives.

[nolist_policy]

Google's payment to Mozilla was ruled anti-competitive and is forced to stop paying them.

https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-poten...

[Certhas]

Interesting, I hadn't heard about this. Let's see where this goes...

[sumedh]

The only reason they pay firefox is to make sure its not killed and they can tell the regulators that look there some competition.

[iamacyborg]

That and the captive audience for their search ads…

[whywhywhywhy]

How much of that money is from Google?

[wanderingbit]

I use Brave which is based off of Chromium just like Chrome, and the experience is great. I’d say I’ve had to go to chrome maybe 3 times in the last year, and it was always for some super complicated SPA.

Whatever decrease we see to our browsing experience will be worth the gains I expect to see from dealing a blow to a monopoly like Google.

[regularfry]

The question of who would likely buy it is just as important. I can't help but think that MS would love to have the dominant browser again.

[Xelbair]

If there's no market for that it will die, simple as.

keeping chrome alive isn't the goal, keeping the web not being at whims of a single company is.