It's odd that people think Google is incredibly worried about having too large of a market share in the browser market (which they don't make any money from) yet their 92% market share in searches is not concerning at all in terms of the potential for regulation.

The truth is nobody does anti-trust anymore (though they definitely should) and the big corporations aren't worried at all about it. Google makes Chrome, Android, and pays Mozilla because they want to maintain dominance in the search market. Which is the thing they make money form. What they pay Mozilla is a drop in the bucket compared to what they pay Apple to be the default search engine on their devices.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google doesn't directly make money from their browser, but controlling their browser means they lock in the thing that drives their revenues. They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn't. We've also seen recently how they're trying to make it so people can't run ad blockers, something they could only consider if they lock down the entire browser market.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago

I disagree.

Google doesn't "control" mozilla in that way.

They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t.

They could do this even if they weren't funding mozilla. Ad's aren't exactly reliant on bleeding edge web standards anyway. You're thinking about tracking tech, which they don't have any input in for firefox.

We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers

Well yes, and mozilla was quite vocal in their opposition, demonstrating that Google doesn't have much control over them.