Android & Chill
One of the oldest technological columns on the web, Android & Chill is your Saturday discussion on Android, Google and All Things Tech.
The United States Ministry of Justice still wants to force Google to sell Chrome. The judge has not yet made a final decision, but the indications are that this is not the way it will happen. We will have to wait until all the dust will be settled for the whole answer.
There are good reasons why we should not want to see Chrome who has just sells the most bidder. First, who has the capacity to maintain it as it needs and which is not as bad in Google with regard to the abuse of alleged market shares? (Index: person.)
I still believe that Without Google, Chrome and Android will die. The only reason to invest time and money to keep a project like Chrome alive is to earn even more money.
We are talking about a massive investment. There are thousands of people who actively work on “chrome” to some extent. These payroll checks – as well as research and development costs, tests and many smaller auxiliary expenses – all are added to millions. You and I cannot afford to buy Chrome, but even if we could, we could never allow ourselves to keep it alive.
Everyone wants a slice of this pie
We have heard of potential buyers of Perplexity in Yahoo at Search.com. But really, each technological company would like to be the one that controls Chrome, because it holds around 60% of the web browser market. This means that six out of 10 people use the Chrome browser.
Technically, there are several companies that would be excellent chrome guards. Oracle, Nvidia, Arm, etc., all would be able to devote the resources necessary to get things done.
Unfortunately, none of these companies or those who have expressed their interest should never be in charge. Google should not either for the same reasons.
Why this counts
The Internet is a waste of websites on everything you can imagine, based on online purchases, commercial lists, social media and things that are not safe. One thing that keeps it usable is research. Indexing everything that the Internet has to offer and deliver it in an easy way to digest is something that everyone depends on.
Maybe The same results. Your web browser uses a default search engine like Google when using it this way. Do you see the problem here?
If I control what search engine users get by default (as Google does with Chrome or Microsoft with Edge), I now have an advantage. If I am also a research company (once again, like Google), it is a huge and probably unfair advantage.
It would not be if there was no manipulation of the results. Ideally, you should be able to search for any engine and get the same results in the same order, whatever the engine you use. They crawl and index all the same pages and gather the same information, so the results are what they are unless they become creative.
The search websites are very creative. Ads, purchase links, AI summaries and the weighting of keywords make all the difference and are why the same search on Google and Bing gives different results in a different provision.
Of course, the research company is paid for these types of links. A lot. Their customers expect a good return on investment, so all kinds of analyzes are collected and used to make sure you see good announcements and business links in the right places at the right time.
What do you know? It’s very good. It stimulates innovation, which means a better experience for everyone, and the company that makes it best deserves its place on the market.
But the world does not work this way. A company with the means of manipulating 60% of research traffic on the web will take advantage of it in money. If you control the browser and the search engine, you are in high cotton. You can indicate users to whatever you want. You cannot click them, but you can make sure they can if they wish.
Just leave to google
No company that has no participation in a search engine has a company controlling Chrome. I said it out loud. Not because I don’t want to google or OpenAi to earn money, but because there will be an abuse of this market share. It is human nature.
The same goes for any business with the financial means to make “special” agreements with a search engine. When Amazon pays 100 ads to display, it must be treated in the same way as the Bob pet store when she pays 100 ads. Bob does not have the same means as Amazon, so you will probably see links to buy your fish food at the retail giant and not in Bob.
It is not because the problem is obvious that the solution is. Each company has a program and the potential to mistreat a product with so much lever effect. They can tell you that they are the right ones, but they will always try sneaky ways to win a dollar. It is their duty to do so because shareholders demand it.
Whoever buys Chrome (if Google is even forced to sell it) will not create a kind of quasi-socialist “for people” web browser with. It will be as usual. I have no idea how it should be managed, but I know with certainty that most companies interested in IT have nothing to do with chrome control.
We could as well leave it in Google’s hands if we want to give it to one of the companies that can afford it.
