Opinion: The Chrome dilemma

The US Department of Justice wants to force Google to sell the Chrome browser. On the one hand, this step is absolutely right and overdue. After all, control over the browser cements Google's dominant position in the search and, above all, the advertising market.

An opinion by Jürgen Schmidt

Jürgen Schmidt – aka ju – is head of heise Security and Senior Fellow Security at Heise-Verlag. A physicist by training, he has worked at Heise for over 25 years and is also interested in networks, Linux and open source. His current project is heise Security Pro for security managers in companies and organizations.

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This creates an extremely harmful and dangerous end-to-end chain: Google dominates internet search and the advertising business. With the browser, the company also has an agent directly on the devices of the advertising targets –, i.e. the end users.

Google shamelessly

And Google shamelessly exploits this, for example by endlessly delaying the long-overdue ban on third-party cookies. Or by deliberately changing internal browser APIs in such a way that adblockers can no longer do their job properly under Chrome. There is nothing to discuss: Google is clearly abusing Chrome to protect the ad business as its blithely bubbling source of revenue. And it is up to the state to do something about it.

And not just for economic or consumer protection reasons. Google's dominant position also harms security. Adblockers are essential security tools today; anyone who surfs without one exposes themselves to a multitude of dangers. One could even argue that they protect more efficiently than conventional virus protection.

Moreover, as a monopolist, Google has no need to take the necessary action against malvertising – i.e. targeted malicious ads. Google did not even prevent malvertising campaigns that allegedly advertised Google's Authenticator, but ultimately installed Infostealer. Targeted ads with malware are one of the attackers' sharpest weapons and have been a growing threat for years.

But what to do?

The problem I have with the forced sale, however, is: who is going to buy Chrome? With the best will in the world, I can't see any scenario in which this would alleviate even one of the problems mentioned. On the contrary: in order for the investment to pay off, the new owner would have to focus the browser even more on profit optimization. This would inevitably be at the expense of the users and their interests – true to the old Internet wisdom: if you don't pay, you're not the customer, you're the product!

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation is also not an option because it would put Chrome in the same pot as Firefox –, the last remaining competitor in the browser market. Perhaps another foundation will step into the breach. The Apache Foundation, perhaps. At least it has experience with large projects in difficult markets.

But where will the money come from? Ultimately, that's wishful thinking. There is nothing left to do but wait and see. After all, the USA is currently facing a change of government, which will also bring new priorities. Who knows, maybe the new US president will spring a surprise: Trump to the rescue?

(mki)