• mox@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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    3 months ago

    YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Google Drive, etc. are all money losers.

    Only if you view them in isolation. In fact, they are what enables Google’s advertising dominance, by providing detailed insight into people’s lives, thereby powering the targeted advertising of AdWords and making it as valuable as it is.

    Android is a huge money loser

    Have you forgotten about the Play Store?

    With Chrome, Google can afford to spend hundreds of millions a year developing it and then give it away for free

    We used web browsers just fine before Chrome existed, before even Google existed, and nobody was paying $79.99 for them. (In fact, Chrome was originally built upon one of the free engines.)

    I would personally be glad to see Chrome disappear, since it is now starting to cause the same problems that Internet Explorer caused more than 20 years ago. Monoculture is bad in this realm. Yes, Google does seem to pour a lot of resources into their browser, but most of that is self-interest; very little of the results are actually needed for a useful, healthy web.

    Breaking it up would be like knocking over a domino without knowing what the chain reaction would be.

    The same fear could have applied to the Bell System. I’m not worried. :)