There’s a lot of reasons to own it, one potential profit source being selling what the default search engine is. Just because Google doesn’t own it doesn’t mean they won’t pay to be the default search. They pay a lot for this on Firefox. (Yes, this is being looked into to and may stop, but they can still sell being an option for the default search engine, or other things.)
Sure but does that outweigh the costs that google was eating while using the browser as a loss leader for search and ads? I doubt they’re going to keep hosting and distributing updates from their CDN for free.
The only people who can afford to own it shouldn’t be able to buy it for the same reasons they’re forcing google to sell it.
why would anyone buy it when it’s primary profit-generating activity is driving traffic to google
Your right.
Your left, my right?
There’s a lot of reasons to own it, one potential profit source being selling what the default search engine is. Just because Google doesn’t own it doesn’t mean they won’t pay to be the default search. They pay a lot for this on Firefox. (Yes, this is being looked into to and may stop, but they can still sell being an option for the default search engine, or other things.)
Sure but does that outweigh the costs that google was eating while using the browser as a loss leader for search and ads? I doubt they’re going to keep hosting and distributing updates from their CDN for free.
The only people who can afford to own it shouldn’t be able to buy it for the same reasons they’re forcing google to sell it.