The US government is looking into breaking Chrome off from Google as part of their antitrust investigation.
QuoteJustice Department and state prosecutors investigating Google for alleged antitrust violations are considering whether to force the company to sell its dominant Chrome browser and parts of its lucrative advertising business, three people with knowledge of the discussions said Friday.
The conversations — amid preparations for an antitrust legal battle that DOJ is expected to begin in the coming weeks — could pave the way for the first court-ordered break-up of a U.S. company in decades. The forced sales would also represent major setbacks for Google, which uses its control of the world’s most popular web browser to aid the search engine that is the key to its fortunes
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/10/feds-may-target-googles-chrome-browser-for-breakup-428468
Imagine a Chrome that is owned by some other company. That might actually be great. But I wonder who should (or would) buy it. Probably not a good idea to let any of the other FAANG companies or Microsoft buy it. Duckduckgo maybe?
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I don't think it's posted in news yet.
Feel free to post it in news if you want.
Chromium is primarily developed by Google, and Google are the maintainers of Chromium so they are the ones that approve all the code submitted. My guess is that if Google were forced to sell chrome then they would also have to give up ownership of Chromium.
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The sad irony is that, as far as I know, Google funds TONS of otherwise unprofitable things through its massive ad revenue. Like, do they even make money off of OEMs using android in their stuff? YouTube still isn't profitable, Chrome I guess could sell ads, but I doubt it currently makes them any money.
I won't shed a tear for them being broken up, but pretty much everything that is split from them will die in poverty, in all likelihood.
