[dathery]

Isn't "monopolies suppress competition" one of the classic reasons people think they should be broken up? I'm not saying you have to agree with that theory, but just observing a current lack of competition doesn't by itself seem like an argument against breakup.

[flanked-evergl]

Google is not suppressing competition. There are plenty of competing browsers and search engines, they all suck. On the Mobile OS side there is less but substantially more robust competition, even though I, personally, hate iOS. So breaking Google up because of a theoretical problem that is refuted by reality is nonsensible.

[dathery]

> There are plenty of competing browsers and search engines, they all suck.

Maybe our difference in viewpoint is that I see this fact and wonder why it's seemingly impossible for anyone to build a financially viable alternative, and I'm at least open to the idea that it's very difficult to compete with Google when they can leverage their successful ads business to subsidize the investment into their browser.

Yes the alternatives are worse, but is that because Google is inherently smarter, or because the newcomers have a tiny fraction of the investment and usually fizzle out within a year or two? Google doesn't have to be actively trying to kill the competitors for it to have an anti-competitive effect in the market.

[zanellato19]

Also because Googles is part of the web committe because of Chrome, so it gets to dictate how much complexity is in a browser and stiffle competition like that.