How Would a Google Breakup Change the Internet as a Whole

The Google breakup has been a long on-going battle between the US authorities (through multiple administrations) and Google. In the past few weeks, Google seems to win and lose at the same time.

I personally don't see much chance for the Google breakup, because Google will probably figure out something to prevent it. It would be too good to become true. Or would it?

Let's see what would happen if these punishments became real somehow. (Note that some effects are only speculations, not guaranteed to happen even if the breakup becomes a reality.)

Selling Android

Google already started to make the experience worse for custom rom users by giving app devs the option to disallow sideloading their app, and to make custom roms less secure in the long run by moving development fully to the internal dev branch of AOSP, only pushing the source code to the public branch when a new Android version comes out, this way custom roms can't get security patches in the meantime. "Boil the frog." The usual Google technique to slowly kill off the opponents. Google forced to sell Android might change things for the better or the worse. The new owner would most likely be another big tech company, because who else has enough money to buy it. They might stop making further steps to kill off custom roms, or do the opposite, and actually kill them off more quickly.

It's quite a shame that mobile Linux isn't usable for most people, because it can only do basic things like phone calls, SMS, reading news, listening to music, searching on the Internet (although most of the known privacy browsers like Brave and LibreWolf aren't mobile friendly) and similar. If custom roms die, the best solution will probably be to transition to desktop, and use mobile Linux for some basic stuff.

Selling Chrome and stepping down from Chromium development

Two AI companies OpenAI and Perplexity already expressed their interest in acquiring Chrome (for real, although idk why they think Google will let it happen lol), and fill it with AI crap (although I could imagine Google doing the same sooner or later). OpenAI already have their own experimental AI-based search engine, so they would push that on Chrome users. Idk about Perplexity, they might leave Google search as the default. Google's old rival, Yahoo is also interested. If they got it, they would be able to take back the cake from Google, make their search engine the default instead of Google, and be the dominant force in the search engine market again, just like before the Google dominance. It would be pretty interesting now in the modern days of the internet, although I don't think they would be any better than Google, Chrome would remain the same privacy nightmare. Also I wasn't surprised if Microsoft wanted Chrome too. (They didn't express their interest, at least yet, but let's play with the thought, because why not lol). It would be a good opportunity for them to do the same as with Skype and Atom: buy and kill off the rival, make Edge the de facto Chromium browser, and push Bing on everyone.

It seems like there's a new competitor for the purchase in every few days, so I might update the article to include those too, it's worth checking back.

Oh no! Not our all mighty Chrome! It's the only good browser! Others all suck!

If OpenAI or Perplexity got Chrome, it would make sense that they also became the leaders of the Chromium project, push AI crap there too, and make the job of downstream browser devs harder to remove all of that. If Yahoo got Chrome and Chromium leadership, it's hard to tell what they would do, but my guess is, they wouldn't do much, maybe it would be the best outcome for the Chromium base and its users. If Microsoft got the leadership of the Chromium project, they would probably made Chromium suck at security, knowing their track record of being hacked being hacked quite a few times. After killing off Chrome, they might make some steps towards slowly killing off other Chromium based browsers too (just like what Google does with custom roms and ad blockers), to force Edge even more on users, so they won't need to fight against Windows users wanting to install another browser. They will use Edge and be happy. Might as well rename Chromium to Edgium to assert their dominance lol. The Ungoogled Chromium project will need to remove Microsoft crap instead of Google crap from the browser base, so they will become Unmicrosofted Edgium lol.

Depending on who gets Chromium, there's a chance that we lose some privacy browsers like Brave or Ungoogled Chromium (although Brave could probably survive quite much, since it's a pretty big company, but who knows, there were already some rumors about SEC wanting to cancel them because of their crypto stuff).

Stopping search engine contract with Mozilla

Mozilla Firefox was once a pretty popular browser above 20% marketshare, but unfortunately they slowly fell behind, ruined their whole business to the point that nowadays they get around 85% of their revenue from the Google deal for having Google as the default search engine in Firefox. It's good for both companies, because Mozilla can stay afloat, and Google can have what seems a "rival" in the browser market to show that they don't have a monopoly (in which they kinda failed, because Firefox now only has around 3% marketshare lol), plus even more marketshare for their search engine. However, besides the breakup, Google might be forced to discontinue this deal, which of course wouldn't be that good for Google, but it would be much-much worse for Mozilla, because they would lose 85% of their revenue, threatening the existence of the whole company, or at least they would be forced to downscale to the point they would barely be able to maintain Firefox and the Gecko engine as a whole... Unless Microsoft takes advantage of this situation and makes a similar deal with them to have Bing as the default search engine in Firefox. And then Mozilla will be the financial "subsidiary" of Microsoft instead of Google. From the claws of an evil corp to the claws of another evil corp, how cool...

But besides that, if Mozilla would go bankrupt, they wouldn't be the only losers, but also the FOSS and privacy community, since most of our favorite browsers are also Firefox-based, e.g. LibreWolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser, Waterfox, Floorp, Zen Browser, Midori and the list goes on and on. These forks would be pretty likely to die together with Firefox itself, unless maybe Mullvad and the Tor project tries to keep the Gecko engine alive, but even then, it would lack more and more behind Chromium (or Edgium lol), because whatever big tech corp would take control of Chromium, they would probably outrace Mullvad and Tor. If Firefox-based browsers die, basically the only decent privacy browsers would be Brave and Ungoogled Chromium (although former is pretty controversial because of the crypto and AI stuff, latter doesn't have MV2 support anymore), Brave would be basically the only FOSS browser which still supports MV2, and thus the full version of uBlock Origin (although who knows how long they can support it as a Chromium fork), so maybe it's time to do system-level ad and tracker blocking instead (or network-level for those who have the skills for that), without the need of uBlock Origin, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, and also KDE's Falkon browser would be pretty good option, also GNOME Web for those who don't mind its weak performance, and maybe also the new Ladybird browser, which is still experimental, but it already seems to have a pretty solid website compatibility. (Although it would suck a bit in case of Falkon, GNOME Web or Ladybird, that there's no Dark Reader for preventing websites from burning your eyes, or LibRedirect to automatically redirect you from YouTube, Reddit, StackOverflow, Instagram, TikTok etc. to their privacy respecting alt frontends, these would be some tradeoffs unfortunately.) As for mobile browsers, they suck even more than the desktop options, except for Brave which is also on mobile, for Android (and custom roms) there are some other Chromium-based browsers like Privacy Browser or Cromite (fork of the abandoned Bromite), and Jelly Browser on LineageOS, but there aren't any browsers on mobile which aren't based on one of the 3 major browser engines which kinda sucks.

Stopping search engine contract with Apple

Mozilla isn't the only one who get money for shipping Google as the default search engine in Firefox. Google also pays Apple to do the same in Safari, to shove Google search down the throat of the users of the second most popular browser on the market, and also to stop Apple from developing their own search engine. If Google would be forced to discontinue this deal too, then Apple would pretty likely develop their own search engine and ship it as default in Safari, eat up a pretty big portion of Google's marketshare, since Apple normies are too lazy to change the default search engine (although in the EU, iPhone users can choose the default browser during setup, thanks to some regulations, not everyone chooses Safari). It would be good for competition, but wouldn't change much for the privacy community, since it would probably be just as privacy-invasive (regardless of what Apple fanboys say who fall for the company's privacy propaganda, and state that Apple doesn't hand over any user data to anyone, and ignore the fact that they cooperate with the Chinese government to hand over data of Chinese users).

My thoughts on this breakup plan

As I said, I highly doubt it will actually happen, but if it did, it would probably cause more harm than good, especially the Mozilla contract termination part, but even the other parts, because only other big tech corps have enough money to buy the broken down pieces, which are just as evil, and might have different interests which would hurt the interests of users even more. The only real solution would probably be to break up all big tech corps, not just Google (Meta breakup is also under consideration, but it's also unlikely to actually happen), but it probably won't happen because normies would get a panic attack if all their favorite enslavement cells on the Internet would disappear, plus Microsoft keeps authorities in its hands by making them rely on Windows and Office 365 (which EU tries to push back against, but US authorities don't, regardless of which wing is in charge, both like to be enslaved, regardless of what they tell to people using their propaganda machine).