Google to sell Chrome AND be banned from re-entering the browser market for five years, recommends US Department of Justice. (source)
What now? Despite Alphabet probably battling this in court I'm interested in how this might affect the internet and literally the world. Here are a few of my unorganized early thoughts, feel free to share your predictions too
- Chrome itself isn't profitable. Alphabet might try to sell it to another tech firm. Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon have probably no interest in running it. Second row tech firms like Oracle, IBM, Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP might have big interest in this but will probably not allowed by regulators.
- Chrome will IPO independently. It's not unprecedented for a divested spinoff to IPO. Then Chrome will have to make money by itself. Would you be willing to buy Chrome premium subscription? Or do you think corporate customers would be willing to pay while private usage stays free?
- Making all Users pay would fundamentally transform the internet. Imagine a world were Web access costs monthly. The direction in which money flows from user to browser to website would be fundamentally different from the ad-infrastructure
- Mozilla Firefox might not survive this. If Google is forced to stop paying all browser companies we might end up with a 90% Chrome monopoly and 10% Apple adopting the features Chromium forces them to adopt.
- Tor Browser is in deep trouble. Without relying on Firefox we might need to rewrite Tor ontop of Chromium. Depressing thought.
- App internet vs Web internet. The balance might shift. If Chrome costs money and Firefox dies we might see a decline in Web usage and rise of Apps using APIs instead. It's not a prison but can you already feel the walls getting closer?