[paddw]

What's unclear is who the buyer is supposed to be? Chrome's entire monetization is centered around its synergy with Google's ad business. Cutting off Chrome is so much messier, than the obvious, (although I fear it would itself have bad repercussions) decision to force them to sell Youtube.

[glenstein]

Exactly, this is my question as well. I was just thinking about it and thought although it's kind of silly, Google paying them (the newly-divested ChromeCo) for search engine default status could be a primary source of revenue.

I'm actually kind of curious about that as an option. Right now the distortion that makes Google any 800 pound gorilla is their leveraging of Chrome to channel users into their various monetized ecosystems.

But there could conceivably be an interesting form of parity that comes from the browsers all depending on the same form of revenue, search engine placement. I haven't fully thought this through, so I welcome corrections. I suppose Google could quite easily give favorable treatment toward ChromeCo and effectively continue to flex its monopoly muscle. Google will need them just as much as before. I'm honestly just not sure.

[thewebguyd]

Yeah I don't quite understand either. Once you rip Google out of Chrome, it's just chromium, I don't think there's going to be a buyer interested in buying what they can already get and build themselves for free.

A more appropriate ruling would be just force Google to stop distributing Chrome, not sell it but kill it. There's already a myriad of chromium reskins, so that wouldn't change, and that's all chrome will become if someone else buys it. Make the precedent that owners of a search engine can't also have a browser.

I think just killing chrome would do more good than selling it off to become yet another sketchy chromium reskin with questionable privacy and crypto miners.

[pessimizer]

If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a social negative, let it die?

A billion or two dollars would fund development indefinitely. Don't sell it to anybody, make it a nonprofit with a fat trust. I'll say the same thing about Firefox: they got plenty of money from Google. They should have been able to save enough in ten or how ever many years to fund development for all eternity. Instead they paid it to themselves.

[Jensson]

> If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a social negative, let it die?

Its just going to get more user hostile, that is the point. Google has a reason not to sell that data, Chrome company does not.