• @200ok
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    21410 days ago

    Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, says the DOJ is pushing “a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.”

    I’m honestly curious how this would “harm Americans”.

    • @[email protected]
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      10410 days ago

      Google pretending they have any other nationality other then “the global internet” is cute in a disgusting way.

    • @ladicius
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      8910 days ago

      That statement is technically true.

      The billionaire owners are Americans.

      • @Beldarofremulak
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        10 days ago

        Everyone really does need to have that at the forefront of their mind. When the C-suit, wall street, and politicians talk about “Americans” they aren’t talking about us schlubs.

      • @Homescool
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        1210 days ago

        The corporations are people too!

      • @[email protected]
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        38 days ago

        I refuse to call any Billionaires Americans. A billionaire in America has far more in common with a billionaire in Ireland or France than with working class Americans. They don’t use our schools, drink our water, drive our roads, or rely on our safety nets. They don’t take out the trash, do their laundry, wait 6 months for a doctor’s appointment, or stress over defunding their retirement to pay for needed medication.

        Billionaire involvement in politics should be considered foreign interference. Of course AIPAC is foreign interference too, but apparently that’s not a problem either.

    • @phoneymouse
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      2410 days ago

      Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer sounds like Donald Trump

      • @brucethemoose
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        1910 days ago

        I fear this is exactly who they’re courting.

    • @[email protected]
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      89 days ago

      The same ruling would ban Google from paying other browsers to make Google the default search engine.
      This would kill Firefox and make Chromium the only browser engine that’s left.

      • ferret
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        24 days ago

        It would leave the newly-split-off chrome in the same financial situation as firefox. Arguably a worse one.

      • @penfore
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        29 days ago

        That’s really sad…

    • Jo Miran
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      210 days ago

      …a radical interventionist agenda…

      That language seems very “Trump-esque”, and I doubt it is a coincidence.

    • @[email protected]
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      19 days ago

      How does chrome make money? It uses ads from Google, chrome on it’s own is not a business.

      Say you buy chrome, you have to options

      1. Ads built into chrome itself (when you’re in the settings menu, homepage, reading a PDF, playing the dino game)

      2. Force your own default search engine, or get a company like Google or Bing to pay you for the privilege of being a default search engine.

      Neither of these options are better than the status quo

  • @brucethemoose
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    13310 days ago

    This is the last antitrust win we’ll get for years, isn’t it?

    I know Trump doesn’t like Big Tech, but I doubt his admin will punish them meaningfully, but just rail about censorship.

    • babybus
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      8210 days ago

      This isn’t a win I think. They are yet to meet in the court with Google.

      The DOJ will file a revised version of its proposals in early March, before the government and Google return to the DC District Court in April for a two-week remedies trial.

      • @Raiderkev
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        109 days ago

        I keep saying this. In 2 months all this antitrust stuff goes out the window. If people actually bothered to show up on 11/5 Kahn and co could actually get some wins for the American people. Instead, we’re going to get more monopolies shoved down our throats.

      • sunzu2
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        910 days ago

        Microshit treatment incoming IMHO

        People larp these headlines too much

    • @[email protected]
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      9 days ago

      Our govt is pay for play at this point, I struggle to see anything like this going through, especially so close to a new AG appointment.

  • @200ok
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    6810 days ago

    If they’re allowed to choose who they sell it to this won’t change anything

  • @Bosht
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    9 days ago

    Just…please for the love of whatever diety do Microsoft. Fucking sick of their shit recently with One Drive.

    • @xylogx
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      149 days ago

      Do you have a few minutes to learn about our lord and savior Linux?

      • @Bosht
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        149 days ago

        Man the Linux propaganda is STRONG on Lemmy. I’ll say what I’ve said before: I use my computer for gaming, web browsing, and managing a media server for my family that hosts pictures and other things. If those 3 things can be done easily without issue on a Linux distro without having to fuck around with configs every time I want to do something, I’m all in. By what I’ve heard though it’s just not there yet. I am super happy Steam decided to go Linux for their Steamdeck though as I’ve heard thats helped make monumental strides the right direction. Trust me, I want to. Large part of it is I worked tech support for over a decade and having to troubleshoot my own shit is like the furthest thing I want to deal with haha

        • Laurel Raven
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          69 days ago

          Just going to say, I do those things too, on Linux, and while I can’t say I never have to mess with config files, it’s not frequent. And, the computer acting like it’s my computer rather than on loan from a megacorp is nice.

          It’s not all the way there yet but it’s so very close and the bits that are still pain points aren’t nearly as bad as the pain points of Windows.

          As the other commenter said, you should give it a serious try. Mint is very smooth overall.

          • @Bosht
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            19 days ago

            Appreciate it! Thank you!

        • @[email protected]
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          59 days ago

          You owe it to yourself to try it out! I recommend dual booting into Linux Mint Cinnamon for a while and have your windows install to fall back on to. That or one of the gaming-specific distributions, but from what I’ve seen Mint does all with gaming too. It’s a good all-around starting place, and there are a lot of resources because it’s popular and built off of the most popular distro. I installed it on my work machine (software engineering) and I’ve felt no lack of capability or a need to switch to a more “hardcore” distro.

          • @Bosht
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            29 days ago

            Thanks! Appreciate the type up and suggestion. I’ll add it to my list of ones to try out.

        • @[email protected]
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          49 days ago

          Hey I will give my anecdotal recent experience. Several months ago I switched to Pop! OS and have had basically no issues. I have an Nvidia GPU and I play a lot of games. I don’t play any games that are blocked by anti cheat (not because I can’t, I just don’t happen to play the few that are blocked).

          I spent the first day getting everything signed in, installed, set up and tweaked to how I like it with very minimal terminal usage. Mostly gui and clicking.

          Steam+Proton along with lutris makes it easy to play any game for me.

          Side note: I have 4 monitors of varying resolution, size, orientation and refresh rate and it hasn’t caused problems other than the initial setup (I used cursr to help with this)

          • @Bosht
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            19 days ago

            Oh God I didn’t even think about monitors. I only have one but it’s the stupid big ultra wide by Samsung. I honestly play most games in windowed. Wondering if there’s resolution support on the actual os though. The rest is like…5120 x something.

        • @ouch
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          39 days ago

          If you can live without games having invasive anticheat, then everything should be doable, and probably a lot easier than in Windows.

          • @Bosht
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            19 days ago

            Yeah not really into multiplayer competitive games. Indo play a lot of co op though. Will have to find a list somewhere.

            • @hangonasecond
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              9 days ago

              Proton DB is the place to go. But I don’t check 99% of games I play, unless it’s going to be an expensive purchase and I want to check before I buy. I also don’t bother with people’s suggested tweaks on proton db unless I actually personally experience issues. The only game I’ve had to tweak so far has been cyberpunk 2077.

              Edit: added context, I’m on 2 monitors and one of them is an ultrawide. Never had any issues that aren’t similar to issues I’ve experienced on Windows in the past.

              • @Bosht
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                19 days ago

                Okay awesome thank you!

    • @micka190
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      8 days ago

      I feel like Trump’s probably going to axe whoever is finally tackling these monopolies, unfortunately.

    • @[email protected]
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      9 days ago

      What changed with OneDrive? I’m genuinely interested because I’m a user and haven’t noticed anything.

      • @Bosht
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        39 days ago

        On corp side and personal if you don’t have One Drive setup MS will spam notifications to set it up, and when you go to save will try to default to One Drive as opposed to local.

  • @daggermoon
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    429 days ago

    What company could actually afford to buy it other than Google, Meta, or Amazon? Unless they are forced to sell it at a loss, which is fine with me.

    • ArchRecord
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      449 days ago

      By “sell,” they could also mean ending up having Chrome just split off from Google, as a new, independent entity that is its own company, without anybody needing to buy it in the first place.

      • @gap_betweenus
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        69 days ago

        How exactly is this company going to make any money?

        • ArchRecord
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          58 days ago

          Selling user data, selling ad placement, subscriptions for paid services, enterprise-grade support contracts, and the like.

          They could also take an approach similar to Google, branching back out from being just a browser into a suite of related tools that Chrome can then convince users to switch to (similar to how Chrome gets users to not just use Google search, but also services like Gmail too.)

      • @[email protected]
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        69 days ago

        The judge would immediately shut that down for creative avoidance. This is an order to sell, not break up. The DOJ specifically indicated behavioural remedies in this case, meaning Google must not remain in control of Chrome.

        • ArchRecord
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          48 days ago

          This is an order to sell, not break up.

          Currently, it’s still recommended actions to the court. Nothing has actually been finalized in terms of what they’re going to actually end up trying to make Google do.

          Google must not remain in control of Chrome.

          While divestiture is likely, they could also spin-off, split-off, or carve-out, which carry completely different implications for Google, but are still an option if they are unable to convince the court to make Google do their original preferred choice.

          A split-off could prevent Google from retaining shares in the new company without sacrificing shares in Google itself, and a carve-out could still allow them to “sell” it, but via shares sold in an IPO instead of having to get any actual buyout from another corporation.

        • @[email protected]
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          38 days ago

          Don’t ya love it when people comment saying something that they think must be true as if it were actually true, without having the slightest idea?

      • dinckel
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        138 days ago

        With all due respect for Valve, they don’t need this. They exist in their niche, and they’re exceptionally good at doing their work

    • @[email protected]
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      78 days ago

      Microsoft is probably drooling at the prospect. They’ve been trying to get that IE monopoly back since this happened to them.

  • @rockSlayer
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    3710 days ago

    They should force it to become a worker cooperative. It’s the only solution that doesn’t allow for corruption

    • @Freefall
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      910 days ago

      brOURser comrade.

    • @Grimy
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      610 days ago

      Nationalize?

      • @[email protected]
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        69 days ago

        For a lot of things yes.

        However I do not want to use a browser developed by the US gov tyvm

        • @Grimy
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          9 days ago

          My comment is more in line with the corruption aspect. As much as I think they deserve it, giving it to the employees would be more akin to them winning the lottery. In the space of a year, they will have gone public, shareholders would have stormed in and we would be at square one.

          Nationalisation at least has a chance of getting rid of the money corruption aspect. Sadly, the three letter agencies are probably deep in every browser already so I don’t think any solution takes care of that.

          I understand your point though. Personally, I will never use chrome no matter what happens, ha.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 days ago

        Yep, nationalize everything that’s essential or at least offer a nationalized alternative and let the private sector try to compete.

        • @Grimy
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          29 days ago

          I literally salivate at the thought of it happening to the telecom industries.

  • @[email protected]
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    10 days ago

    People wondering what Chrome has to do with a search monopoly:

    The obvious benefit is that they can default the user’s search provider to Google.

    But the more nefarious benefit is that, by controlling both the client and server, they can unilaterally decide the future of web standards. They don’t have to advocate for proposals, gain consensus, and limit themselves to well-supported standards the way other companies do. They can just do it, gain the first-mover advantage, and force others to follow suit.

    If they don’t like HTTP/2, they can invent their own protocol and implement it for their search servers and Chrome. Suddenly, using Chrome with Google Search is way faster than using Chrome with Bing or using Firefox with Google Search. Even if Microsoft and Mozilla don’t like the protocol, they now have to adopt it or fall behind.

    This has happened. QUIC was deployed in 2012. Firefox gained support in 2021.

    They’re doing the same thing with Privacy Sandbox, and you can also look at browser feature compatibility tables to see how eager Google is to force their own interpretation of every not-yet-finalized web standard as the canonical interpretation.

    Edit: Also, JPEG XL vs. WebP.

  • @nutsack
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    289 days ago

    sell it to Microsoft so they can finally have a web browser that people use

    • Liz
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      269 days ago

      Yes, the anti-trust lawsuit should culminate in one part of a tech giant being sold to another tech giant.

      • @nutsack
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        39 days ago

        what else would happen

      • @ouch
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        59 days ago

        Imagine where the software industry would be without all the lost productivity because of MSIE quirks.

    • @serpineslair
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      49 days ago

      Another thing to add to the google graveyard.

    • @confusedbytheBasics
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      19 days ago

      It says they are doing it to compete with iPad. Weird. Aren’t tablets sales across all brands constantly declining?

  • @[email protected]
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    2010 days ago

    There’s literally so much else they should do, google docs, sheets, drive, phones, maps, earth, calendar, play store, translate, etc.
    Good work, continue please.

    • @Kbobabob
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      710 days ago

      What is the issue with docs, sheets, drive, phones, calendar, play store?

      There seems to be plenty of options in all of these spaces. Play store isn’t even on a lot of android devices.

      • @BenLeMan
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        1810 days ago

        Correct. My example for another necessary intervention would be YouTube. That’s a space in which Google does have a monopoly.

        • @Kbobabob
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          39 days ago

          Most definitely. They need viable competition.

        • @[email protected]
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          19 days ago

          Exactly. There are workable alternatives to most of the others, but YouTube has a stranglehold on that type of content due to the network effect. Examples of alternatives:

          • docs/sheets/drive - Microsoft Office 365, OnlyOffice, or self-host LibreOffice Online (through Collabora CODE builds); if you just need drive, there’s also BackBlaze, AWS, DropBox, etc
          • phones - I use GrapheneOS on their Pixel devices, but plenty of other Android phones support LineageOS/DivestOS/CalyxOS
          • calendar - still looking for a replacement for my smart watch, but I’ve been using my Nextcloud install; there are also some FOSS calendars that support CalDav as well, so look around
          • maps - I’ve been using Organic Maps, which has been great; main problem is searching for addresses, but if it’s in there, the directions so far have worked fine; there’s also Apple maps, Bing maps, and probably some others
          • translate - it’s built in to Firefox, and it seems to work well enough in a pinch

          But there’s really not much for YouTube. I guess there’s Odyssee, Rumble, and a few others, but they don’t have anywhere near the content as YouTube, so they’re not really practical alternatives. I actually sub to Nebula which is the closest to a replacement so far, but there’s still a ton of content that doesn’t have a direct replacement there.

          • @Brodysseus
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            19 days ago

            Off topic, but how do you like graphene? I am thinking of making the switch on a pixel 7a, but I have a fear it’ll be like having Linux on my phone where things randomly don’t work and then I have the hobby where I make it work

            • @[email protected]
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              39 days ago

              I really like it, but I also mostly use F-Droid apps. You can install Google Play in the regular app sandbox, which prevents the worst of the issues andn provides most of the benefits.

              That said, there are still some caveats:

              • NFC payments don’t work - I use a Pixel watch instead, which works fine (it’s paired to a separate profile on my phone with Google Play installed)
              • some banking apps don’t work (some check if your phone OS is stock)
              • some apps just don’t work without Google Play services running (e.g. the Sensi app for my smart thermostat), and some have issues even with it running

              But other than that, it works pretty well! I have three profiles set up:

              • Owner - default, with no Google Play
              • Work - handful of work apps using my work Google account
              • Google - apps that require Google Play, using a fresh Google account

              I’m using a Google Pixel 8, and it does what I need it to do.

    • @[email protected]
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      229 days ago

      Seeing how tech illiterate some of these people are, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what ends up happening

    • @xylogx
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      29 days ago

      How would that work exactly? Google would sell Chrome but keep paying teams if developers to work on Chromium?

      • @[email protected]
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        59 days ago

        Basically. I mean look at Edge, it’s running Chromium under the hood, but the UI is developed by Microsoft.