The FTC / DOJ should strip Google of Chrome.
Honestly, they should split Google into four or five "baby Bell"-type companies. They're ensnaring the public and web commerce in so many ways:
- Chrome URL bar is a "search bar"
- You have to pay to maintain your trademark even if you own the .com, because other parties can place ads in front of you with Google Search. (Same on Google Play Store.)
- Google search is the default search
- Paid third parties for Google search to be the default search
- Paid third parties for Google Chrome to be the default browser
- Required handset / Android manufacturers to bundle Google Play services
- Own Adsense and a large percentage of web advertising
- Made Google Payments the default for pay with Android
- Made Google accounts the default
- Via Google Accounts, removes or dampens the ability for companies to know their customer
- Steers web standards in a way advantageous to Google
- Pulls information from websites into Google's search interface, removing the need to use the websites providing the data (same as most AI tools now)
- Use Chrome to remove adblock and other extensions that harm their advertising revenues
- Use Adsense, Chrome performance, and other signals to rank Search results
- Owns YouTube, the world's leading media company - one company controls too much surface area of how you publish and advertise
- Pushes YouTube results via Google and Android
... and that's just scratching the surface.
Many big tech companies should face this same judgment, but none of the rest are as brazen or as vampiric as Google.
> The answer is antitrust.
Anti-trust is crucial to make the capitalist economy work prperly, I agree
But another answer is "Firefox"
No it isn't. If you want your capitalism to be liberal, you need antitrust, true. If you only want capitalism, and don't really care about the 'liberty' part, you can check the mercantile capitalism of old. It worked quite well for people with power.
One failure mode of unchecked and unregulated capitalism is the establishment of monopolies that can starve oxygen from the rest of the ecosystem.
In order to have maximally efficient and broadly beneficial capitalism, you need strong anti-trust mechanisms to reoxygenate the environment for new competition. Regular enforcement also means that labor and investment capital reap the most rewards instead of calcified, legacy incumbents.
Companies need to be constantly fighting to survive. If they're sitting comfortable and growing without controls, something went wrong and the rest of the fitness landscape is being distorted by an invasive species.
Antitrust Regulation is incredibly pro-market and pro-competition.