Will Google Keep Supporting Chrome Browser? ramblinggit.com

@bradenslen Google’s initial reason for building Chrome, before they were quite a surveillance data capitalist, was to ensure that they had a browser they could control in order to control how their web software worked, in a very MS-IE manner (though under a friendlier, “Do No Evil” coat of paint at the time). They didn’t want to wait for other vendors to implement things they wanted to use, or implement them in a way that would make them less useful to Google web software, and they certainly didn’t want to deal with the Mozilla feature and code review process (nor, as it turned out, WebKit’s). That control reason is still valid today (assuming they do not shutter Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, and maybe some other minor web apps), even if they can’t keep tracking and accumulating data on people as they have before (Maps is critical to Android, and Gmail/Docs have paying customers already, so there’s a non-surveillance avenue for migrating revenue from them already). And the more people who use Chrome, the less Google has to pay Apple and Mozilla for search-engine placement to keep that monopoly firewalled.

Beyond that, they need a browser for Android, and, again, one they can control; no one wants their OS beholden to someone else’s browser (except, I suppose, Microsoft—they’re beholden to Blink, if not necessarily Chome/Chromium).

So, short of Google going under or discontinuing all of its web software (and Android) in favor of Nest, Assistant hardware, robots, and cars, I don’t think Chrome is going anywhere anytime soon. (If I were Microsoft, though, I’d certainly be talking with other Blink-using vendors and keeping a contingency plan on the burner, regardless of the way the winds are blowing at any time, because they need a browser and, really, rendering engine, they can control, and something else Google might do with Chrome might require them to fork.)

@smokey But that's just it: I don't think Google will have total control over Android forever. I think the EU will eventually force Google to allow browser choices on setup.

The problem is, Google has made data mining part of it's DNA. Can all parts survive if Google is forced out of their gatekeeper position and the data mining is forbidden?

@smokey It may take a few years. Google will fight any anti-trust breakup tooth and nail. But co-founders, Page and Brin, stepped aside for a reason: together they still control Alphabet and can pull the strings, but they see what's coming and don't want to be in the hot seat.