Not to be dramatic, but from a security perspective, it feels a little like the scene in Ghost Busters where the EPA inspector orders a Con Ed worker to shut down the containment system.
I'm trying to imagine all the operational implications and this particular suggestion feels hasty.
Buying the browser should come with most of the engineers that actively work on it, or at least the ones with most experience working on it, maybe even give them a tiny part of the shares of whatever company gets to own it, or perhaps with a contract for at least for a couple of years (and then could return to Google or whatever), and if possible include some incentives to make them focus on working on security bugs over new features, which tbh I think there is just too many every year.
> Buying the browser should come with most of the engineers that actively work on it
The 13th Amendment to the US constitution makes the sale of people illegal.
Seriously though - how would this ever work? Google cannot negociate on behalf of their employees or promise they will work somewhere if Google stops employing them.
I don't like it either, but it doesn't seem unprecedented. Companies sell units to each other (complete with staff) all the time.
I'm pretty sure everyone who worked at Universal Studios still worked there after Comcast bought them. I don't recall any staff being included when Google sold Domains to Squarespace, but they very well could have been.
Hell, if you've ever temped in tech, sometimes you wake up and find out you work for a different agency. "Yesterday you worked at Magnit. Today you work at TechPro."
Or it could be something in between - the buyer offers you a new contract and the seller says you'll be laid off if you don't take it.
Companies regularly buy and sell parts of themselves. I think the standard approach would be for Chrome employees to be given golden handcuffs of some sort.
Being owner of even a tiny bit of a brand new company that owns Chrome would be very attractive to engineers already working on Chrome, and it wouldn't be wise for any parent company to piss them off as they know the software better than anyone.
The revenue and profitability of "the Chrome Company" is going to be far less than Google, since Google's rising tide is what lifted that particular boat.
How would the Chrome Company deal with this?
Would they do closed source development going forward, no more free lunch for other browsers or shells using Chrome as an engine?
How much of a hit does this mean for employees salaries? They are currently making Google money, and now they're about to make Microsoft money.
How many would just be flat out laid off due to a lack of revenue, at least in the short term? Would it be a 50% lay off? Into a job market that's already bad?
Firefox makes hundred of millions of dollars in revenue per year. If you assume the same revenue per user and apply it to Chrome's market size (about 30x that of firefox) then you have a top 20(?) tech company in revenue terms.
They will have more money than they know what to do with. But yes, going closed source does seem more likely.
Isn't firefox mostly making its money from Google? They'll be struggling too if Google gets out of the browser business and no longer feels the pressure to sustain them
Yeah, especially if this breaks Chrome Remote Desktop in any way, seems like that capability would be tied into the Google ecosystem... I wonder how long we will have to say goodbye to the simplest remote desktop that has ever existed.
At this point, AGI could mean anything, from taking the majority of people's jobs to enriching themselves and never achieving 'AGI' in the first place.
It is entirely possible that 'AGI' could be a massive lie and was all about capturing the wealth for a few people at the company.
The article seems to be a set of ideas and opinions, strongly held, that simply use the Apple Vision Pro as a conduit to convey to the world. When that happens, it's often a poor review and unjustifiably critical.
This was never intended to appeal to broad consumer base. It's a v1, innovative and cutting-edge technology that Apple decided was ready enough to put in the hands of some early adopters and developers. It's priced out of the consumer market range and isn't intended to meet all the goals of a device ready to appeal to the broad consumer base.
They want to get feedback from early adopters and developers to iterate on their software and marketplace, while they continue to drive down weight and cost and refine the hardware side of the device. The expectations for devices right now is pretty high given the decades of development we're accustomed to, but as an early adopter of the first iPhone itself, I remember how limited it was.
If the iPhone v1 was released in the environment we have tooday, it'd be lambasted as being limited. No app store, no app switching, no notification center, etc. It took time and work with developers and users in the real world to start fleshing out the product. Same thing will happen with the Apple Vision.
I can appreciate people reviewing the product and saying it's not for them, it's too heavy, it's not ready for mainstream use - but to me, they simply miss the point. It's a showcase device, only geared to those with money to burn, who are early adopters or developers. It shows a ton of promise, but it will be a generation or two before they fill in the product category under the "Pro" designation, and have an Apple Vision Air, Apple Vision, and Apple Vision Pro, with specs that appeal to broad audiences. It's coming, and their strategy to get the device in the hands of users and get feedback and folks developing on it, is a good one.
My mind initially goes to the Apple Vision Pro. A lot of people spend time pointing out what the first generation of the product doesn't do (yet), and while they appreciate all the good things it has that are true next-gen capabilities, they give nearly equal time to the things it doesn't do well yet.
I find that this is really common in putting something new out there, that if it's new enough the majority of the focus is on the pieces that seem scary, don't work as well as we think it should work, or is missing something that can be added on later. We assess new ideas and products of a new generation against our understanding of often lesser products of a former generation, and are all too quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As the article states, it's rare that folks can look past critical appraisals of new things and understand that with continued work on the product, feature, app, etc. it can turn into something special.
> My mind initially goes to the Apple Vision Pro. [...] while they appreciate all the good things it has that are true next-gen capabilities, they give nearly equal time to the things it doesn't do well yet.
Depending on which traits of the Apple Vision Pro that these people criticize, they are actually very right in their skepticism.
For example:
- Is the Apple Vision Pro very open for installing own software/firmware? -> for this, Apple has to become an entirely different company
- Related: will the Apple Vision Pro enforce an App Store -> very likely, and this will in all likelihood not change
- Does the Apple Vision Pro have good repairability? -> I guess it won't get one in the foreseeable future.
In this sense: perhaps I am one of these critics that you have in mind; I nevertheless stand by my position: for the things that the Apple Vision Pro does in my opinion badly to disappear, Apple has to become a very different company.
