Google Being Forced To Sell Chrome is Not Good for the Web

You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade.

So we’re going to force you sell your car.

What’s with the weird redirect? If the monopoly is directly caused by paying the grocery stores for placement, then stop that part.

We can see this exact redirect happening in the ruling in the U.S. vs Google court case.

Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.

[…]

For years, Google has secured default placements through distribution contracts. It has entered into such agreements with browser developers, mobile device manufacturers, and wireless carriers.

[…]

Because many users simply stick to searching with the default, Google receives billions of queries every day through those access points.

Judge Mehta

In the document:

It’s spelled out quite clearly that being the default is the monopolistic part and that’s caused by paying for it (which is then self-perpetuating as the placement is so valuable, the money generated by it pays for those default placements.)

Fair enough! Let’s stop that.

Let’s stop the monopoly by telling Google they can’t pay (certain? all?) companies to be the default search engine anymore. A step further could be forcing browsers should ask users what they want their default search engine to be.

This would be in line with how Apple was forced to allow for browser choice:

That’s a straight line from problem to solution.

A weird curvy-ass line between problem and solution is this strange solution that is being relentlessly proposed that Google should be forced to sell Chrome.

There is a recent round of news covering this that all point to the curvy-ass-line solution.

• USA Today: “Google will have to part with its dominant Chrome browser if the U.S. Department of Justice has its way.”
• WIRED: “the Department of Justice reiterated that Google should stop paying partners for search placement—and divest its dominant Chrome browser.”
• Ars Technica: “the government maintains that Chrome must go if the playing field is to be made level again.”

It’s true that Chrome ships with Google as the default search engine, because, ya know, they invested billions in Chrome and that’s how business works. But still, a more direct line from problem to solution is forcing default search engine choice, not a forced sale of Chrome itself.

Why do I care? The sale of Chrome is bad for the web.

I’ve written before that Chrome is unusual in that it’s really only particularly useful to Google:

Users don’t pay for Chrome. There aren’t ads in Chrome. There is no direct business model for Chrome. Unlike Safari and Firefox, nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default.

The value of Chrome is all tangential — it provides value to Google. Whoever buys it does not inherit that same tangential value, they would need to redirect what little of it they can somewhere else, likely fighting against the natural flow that has been baked into it since the beginning.

I’m not saying Google shouldn’t be forced to sell Chrome just because it’s only valuable to Google. But I do think Google should be allowed to have a browser. Google is a web business, that’s their whole thing. They made a browser to invest in the web itself because what is good for the web is good for Google, and happens to be good for all of us.

Allow me to be more clear about why Chrome is good for all of us.

When you look at (or otherwise experience) anything on a digital device, you’re looking at an operating system. That operating system was probably made by a private company who has total control over it. They have the right to do that, but that operating system exists to serve that company only and entirely.

If you make a native app for mobile devices, it is at the pleasure of the companies who build mobile operating systems and you’ll do it with the technology they allow. Making an app for iOS vs Android is super different and the companies behind them and never going to shake hands and make it easier for developers. It’s largely the same making a native app for desktop computers. While there is a bit more freedom of what you can install there, making a macOS app and a Windows app is two entirely separate endeavors.

Not so with the web. The web is a set of protocols and languages and file formats and other technology that congeal to make digital experiences. No one company owns or controls it. It is designed to be open and it’s good when companies build new things and support web standards. It’s a modern miracle that we have such a thing and it’s on us to protect it.

If I go to a website on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, some Linux distro, my Samsung phone, or whatever device I have that has a web browser on it, it really is the same set of files that deliver that experience. You and I and every company in the world can build things once that go everywhere. That’s how it should be. It’s fair and efficient. It’s good for the world. It’s much better than a world where we are forced to build things only for companies proprietary operating systems.

Google, by virtue of having Chrome, invests heavily in the web itself. Not just Chrome-the-browser, but the web standards that power the web. I can’t claim to know every detail of that investment, but I personally know people employed by Google that literally just try to make the web better all day.

It’s not hard to poke around the W3C specs themselves and see them littered with Google employees.

And there are evangelists, and documentation writers, and other people who aren’t working directly on Chrome, but really the web itself.

Will Google continue to invest like this if they are forced to sell Chrome? It would be hard to blame them if they did not.

Assuming they find a buyer, that buyer will be scrambling to find a way to make that investment worth it. Will they be choosing to employ people who are just abstractly making the web better? I would think not.

The web will suffer should Google be forced to sell Chrome. I think a fair assumption that overall investment and contribution to the open web will take a dive.

Sure, there will be some canonical fork of Chromium that keeps the sure-to-be-shunned buyer company out of it. Sure, the Linux Foundation is getting their ducks in a row to have contributors ready. But I can’t see it going well.

It won’t happen overnight, but stagnation will set in. A stagnated web is incentive for the operating system makers of the world to invest in pulling developers toward those proprietary systems. The browser wars sucked but at least we were still making websites. Being forced to make proprietary apps to reach people is an expensive prospect for the rest of us companies of the world, it will probably be done poorly, and we’ll all suffer for it. Heck, those operating systems aren’t required to ship a web browser at all.

Whatever way this goes is bad for Mozilla. It’s possible Google is forced to not pay them for default search engine placement anymore, but even if they aren’t, you can imagine Google’s appetite for cutting that check is severely diminished. Mozilla’s 2020 layoffs that was publicly about reducing platform development still has me thinking they aren’t entirely serious about pushing the web forward, particularly with much less help.

And bad things happening for Mozilla is also bad for the web, so another domino may fall. Diminishing investments in the web generally will keep knocking over dominos.

I’ve typed enough. Google does all kinds of shitty stuff. They are surely the worst offenders of user surveillance on the web. Let’s not let them off the hook on that. Let’s see the DOJ get involved in that stuff. But forcing a sale of Chrome is not the way.