this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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i really distrust Google and I'm glad about the verdict. I do agree that chrome and android should be ~~cut off models~~.
edit: cut off from advertising business models
on the other hand, like with Firefox, I'm worried about the instability and changes that are coming, mainly in the effect on fork projects Like Graphene, Calyx, Lineage, any privacy-focused Chrome forks, and of course Chromium.
DOJ probably isn't able to guarantee chrome & potentially android are taken over by totally ethical, stable companies/NPOs who will keep the projects open source, or allow an open source offshoot project to which the new organization would still contribute coding people-hours.
I'm sure there will be some sort of guarantees for stock chrome and android users, like paid services/subscriptions will be continued or refunded.
but what about users of community projects based on chrome and Android?
many other Lemmy users have commented how community projects don't really have the resources to keep browser engines up to date, let alone innovate. without Google (which i think is a good thing), Microsoft Edge team could become the de facto direction-setter of Chronium (which i think is really really really bad).
TL;DR the foss mobile OS community, and especially the foss browser community (considering Firefox funding shortfall and AI/ad revenue pursuits) are possibly f*ed in the a for the near term.
This doesn't seem like their job. This is antitrust, as long as the result isn't monopolistic, that's it, no?
You're right, but the concern is still valid.
Oh, it absolutely is, sorry if it felt like I was challenging that. It's just a reminder to temper our hopes.
No worries! Yeah I agree.
it's not their job, i agree. not under the current constitution and laws.
i meant to highlight that no one is going to guarantee anything (other than Google losing ownership of Chrome/Android).
Not sure why Google needs to sell chrome but Microsoft doesn't need to sell edge. Noone controlling the device should also own the internet browser imo.
I think the biggest difference is the fact Google owns the majority of the web browser market share, but there's more to the cases than "big company owns big browser," it actually has to do with Google's search engine deals (e.g. with Apple and Mozilla) and Google's ad business stifling the industry.
I only mentioned MS Edge to highlight that it's a chrome(-ium) browser and ~~therefore~~ Edge probably has a paid team of developers.
That team probably has enough quantity of members (or coding work hours) to overwhelm the upstream chromium code contributions of volunteer developers of foss projects.
Because of Edge's volume of contributions, they could accidentally/intentionally decide the direction of Chromium, even without owning it officially. That's one of the ways I heard that Google controlled Chromium, accidentally or intentionally.
edit: wording mistake