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GRAMGoogle is in trouble. As my colleague Dan Milmo reported, the US Department of Justice “has proposed a far-reaching review of Google’s business structure and practices, including the sale of its Chrome browser, in an attempt to end its monopoly on Internet searches. The move follows a major court ruling last August in which a federal judge found that Google had violated antitrust laws and had an illegal monopoly on search services. The Justice Department’s suggestion is forceful: “Google should get rid of Chrome.” As for Android, the Justice Department proposes two possible solutions: divest or submit to government oversight.
Both lawsuits present seismic challenges for Google’s multiform advertising business and would be a worst-case scenario for the company.
In an aggressively defensive attitude blog postGoogle Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker called the Justice Department’s proposals “staggering,” “extreme,” and “unprecedented government overreach.” Walker can’t have an easy job right now. The company plans to submit its own proposals next month and appeal its original loss in court. Still, Walker’s tone was, at times, almost comically histrionic: “As just one example, the Justice Department’s proposal would literally require us to install not one, but two separate choice screens before we can access Google search.” on a Pixel phone you purchased.” Not one, but Two separate choice screens??!!
The justice department says its goal is to increase competition. Their lawyers wrote in a court filing: “A remedy for Google’s unlawful monopolization must simultaneously (1) free these markets from Google’s exclusionary conduct; (2) open them to competition; (3) deny Google the fruits of its legal violations; and (4) prevent Google from monopolizing these and other related markets in the future.”
Google search is the cornerstone of the company’s lucrative advertising business; Chromium is the second stone. It is the most popular browser in the world and has a market share of almost two-thirds of the people who use the Internet. It is an absolute void of browsing data and a key gateway to Google search and therefore ads displayed through Google search. Its advertising business precedes everything else the company does in terms of profit and importance, making Chrome the second most important part of Google. The advertising business takes a hard hit without Chrome and Google shrinks. That is the goal of the justice department. Google maintains that divestment would harm American leadership in the technology industry; The Justice Department maintains that Google’s monopolistic conduct harms American leadership in the technology industry.
Google could also be forced to sell Android, the most popular operating system for smartphones. Android is also a conduit for data used to sell ads. The sale of Android would also be a huge blow to Google’s business. The most interesting outcome regarding Android would be the submission of the operating system to government oversight. What design decisions would a government committee make? It would be fascinating to see the aesthetic qualities of a government-run smartphone operating system. Two Separate choice screens? Sweet suffering Jesus!
Without Chrome, Google would also lose the valuable youth market. The tech giant’s Chromebooks are a low-cost item for schools that distribute laptops to students. Those laptops use Chrome OS, an operating system designed for web browsing and web-based tasks. Children who know a company’s products become accustomed to using them and may seek out that company’s products as adults. Apple has stated that training school-age users about its products can generate a significant pipeline of new customers.
Defaults are powerful, whether they appear as devices in schools or as the search engine that appears in your browser’s address bar. Even if Google manages to appeal the forced divestiture of Chrome, it seems likely that the company will be forced to end its at least $20 billion deal with Apple to keep its search engine as the default in the Safari browser. Google’s only concession, it seems from Walker’s blog post, is to say that it would be fine with changes, perhaps even complete cancellations, to those agreements. Walker writes that the Justice Department could have proposed solutions related to “search distribution agreements”: Google’s contracts with Firefox and the like. If even Google’s chief legal officer says he would have preferred changes to those agreements, it is reasonable to infer that he would have accepted them. Browser agreements are not long for this world. You, the user of the product, may be tasked with choosing a default search engine for your iPhone browser. I would recommend trying something other than Google, maybe the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, just for fun. You can always go back. Google will still be there, waiting for you.
Reviews
Elon ‘First Buddy’ Musk and his debut companion, Doge
Several weeks ago, “First Friend” Elon Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were formally named heads of the new Department of Government Efficiency. Doge, as Musk insists the department be called, is not part of the US government, but he has given it a gray check mark on Twitter/X, indicating it is a “government account or multilateral organization ”. Musk and Ramaswamy are, in fact, Trump advisers. The House oversight committee is creating a subcommittee to work with them. It’s kind of funny that an office dedicated to reducing bureaucracy requires two bosses (and the help of Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House).
In a test in the wall street newspaperThey lay out their vision for the non-governmental government agency. They plan to work primarily through executive action, via Trump’s executive order, predicting that the conservative Supreme Court will agree with their actions. They talk vaguely about efficiencies at a high level, abstracting as much as possible from specific details. For example: “A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides a strong industrial rationale for massive personnel reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” These are big words to say: “We’re going to roll back the laws so we can make big layoffs. That will reduce government costs and increase the workload of each individual employee.”
Like Trump, they list their enemies in the form of a cost-cutting list: the media, international cooperation (after all, America first), and liberals. They cite “$535 million a year for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; From $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million for progressive groups like Planned Parenthood,” as examples of what they would cut. At the same time, they say laying off large numbers of federal employees will not be political retaliation but will constitute only apolitical “staffing reductions.” They also promise to require all employees to be in the office five days a week.
Musk has done his best to make Doge seem edgy, but nothing, absolutely nothing, is less punk or sexy than federal spending policy.
He’ll need his gift for boosting if he wants to achieve Doge’s multi-million dollar goals. The week before, the world’s richest man called for applications from “high-IQ revolutionaries” for his new company. The advantages? Long hours, “tedious work” (in Elon’s own words) and no pay.
Musk and his crony’s understanding of government seems limited in their public statements, which may be the point of their appointments, but it is also an obvious obstacle. He and Ramaswamy would like to cut all government programs that no longer have active authorization from Congress. This idea makes basic logical sense. However, as one observer on X noted, such action would eliminate health care for all US military veterans. Authorization for the Veterans Health Care Eligibility Act expired in 1998. Doing so would undoubtedly be a huge political mistake and highly unlikely to pass, even if it saved taxpayers some $120 billion.
Musk has been named Trump’s “cost-cutting secretary.” If you’re wondering what your approach to cutting costs has been in the past, the new york times You’ve compiled a list of expenses you’ve cut across your collection of businesses. Short version: Their tactics worked well at SpaceX, not so much at Tesla. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket costs $550 million, while NASA has projected that building the same spacecraft would cost the agency $4 billion. At Tesla, Musk refused to use more expensive radar sensors for the fully autonomous driving mode of his cars and opted for cameras. The United States is now investigating the role of self-driving software in a series of fatal crashes.
Opt Out: How to Stop Tech Companies from Spying on Your Phone
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Use encrypted messaging apps
Examples: Signal, Apple iMessage, WhatsApages, Google Messages.
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Apple iMessage: This is also end-to-end encrypted when you talk to other people with iPhones and if you have advanced data protection turned on. To do this, go into settings, tap your Apple ID profile at the top, tap iCloud, and scroll down to the “advanced data protection” option and turn it on.
Google Messages: End-to-end encrypted conversations have “a banner that says: ‘Chat RCS with (contact name or phone number)'” and “a block on the send button when you compose a message.” by Google.
Your messages disappear: Encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp allow users to set messages to be automatically deleted after a certain period of time.
Automatically delete your data
Minimize the amount of data that other apps and services collect about you and ensure that the data you allow them to collect is automatically deleted.
Google is the largest holder of data about you. You can minimize the amount of data your business stores from your activity page at myactivity.google.com.
Turn off your location settings
Law enforcement agencies actively request or purchase location information from technology companies. All you need to protect yourself is a 15-minute check:
On iPhones, you can start by going to your settings and looking for “location services” at the top.
On Android, start by going to your settings, then “security and privacy”, then “privacy controls”, then “permissions manager” and select location.
Read the full practical guide here.