[hackerbob]

If Google has to sell Chrome what stops another buyer from being even more profit maximizing then Google. What if a private equity firm like Silver Lake buys it?

Some will say well the free market will do its thing and people will just switch. The problem is Chrome has a 60-70% market share. And like it or not anyone that is a professional developer will be at the mercy of this new buyer because like them or not they will own 60%+ browser market share overnight.

Anyone who was old enough to remember what web development was in the 2000s and early 2010s remembers that was not a smooth or enjoyable transition going from IE to Firefox to Chrome. I remember those years it was the Dark Ages of desktop internet browsing.

[asadotzler]

Nothing, but at least they won't have the largest web properties and the most sprawling ad surveillance network to combine with that browser in ways that are evil and anti-competetive. Silver Lake won't knowingly ship a bug in Google Search or Gmail that breaks Firefox or Safari for a month, peeling off millions more of those users to Chrome which magically works despite the other-browser breaking bug, then rinse and repeat once every 3-6 months for a decade until the competition has no users any more.