I can make up numbers too!
It’s value is tied to being a part of Google and pushing google products. Take away from google and it’s Mozilla looking for ways to be well funded
Less CEO “wages”
Chrome shouldn’t be worth more than an IMAP client. If it is, then the web should be torn down and built anew.
IMAP is an incredibly simple protocol compared to the sum of all the protocols that are needed to implement a web browser.
A web browser also has to be way more performant.
Both an IMAP client and a web browser have to be reliable and secure. However achieving so in a system as complex as a web browser is incredibly expensive.
Web browsers are almost as complex as operating systems.
Complexity, performance, reliability and security on that level are expensive. You would be delusional to think a web browser should be worth as much as an IMAP client.
You would be delusional to think a web browser should be worth as much as an IMAP client.
This is a problem with web browsers and that set of protocols, not with my comparison.
You still ultimately run networked sandboxed applications in a web browser and view hypertext, it’s an unholy hybrid between two things that should be separated.
And it was so 20 years ago.
For the former Java applets and Flash were used a lot, as everyone remembers. The idea of a plugin was good. The reality was kinda not so much because of security and Flash being proprietary, but still better than today. For the latter no, you don’t need something radically more complex than an IMAP client.
I think Sun and Netscape etc made a mistake with JavaScript. Should have made plugins the main way to script pages.
You think running Java applets and flash was better than what we have today? Now that is delusional!
Not exactly what I said. I think these two were bad, but the idea of plugins was good.
Especially the uncertainty of whether a user has a plugin for the specific kind of content.
One could use different plugins, say, that plugin to show flash videos in mplayer under Unices.
It’s worse when everyone uses Chrome or something with modern CSS, HTML5 etc support.
The modularization was good. The idea that executable content can be different depending on plugins and is separated from the browser. I think we need that back.
And in some sense it not being very safe was good too. Everyone knew you can’t trust your PC when it’s connected to the Interwebs, evil haxxors will pwn you, bad viruses will gangsettle it, everything confidential you had there will turn up for all to see. And one’s safety is not the real level of protection, but how it relates to perceived level of protection. That was better back then, people had realistic expectations. Now you still can be owned, even if that’s much harder, but people don’t understand in which situations the risk is more, in which less, and often have false feeling of safety.
One thing that was definitely better is - those plugins being disabled by default, and there being a gray square on the page with an “allow content” or something button. And the Web being usable in Lynx.
Given the core of the product is open source (see chromium) I find it really hard to believe that the brand is worth that. Google could sell it for an amount and release Android Internet and it will do almost exactly the same thing. And users I suspect won’t care. Google needs broken up for sure, but the browser brand makes little sense to me being separate
It’s not only about the brand, it’s about the installed base. You have hundreds of millions (billion plus?) of users who use your application every day for a wide variety of tasks.
And if you start fucking with them then they will all go to Google’s new browser. Just like the old one. Not all, but you get the picture. Chrome isn’t worth $50bn to anyone but Google
That is a possibility.
However, I think in this particular case, the DDG CEO is better qualified than me or you to evaluate the value of Chrome. I can’t think of any reason for Weinberg to promote an inflated valuation for Chrome.
CEOs are weird. DDG might be a privacy champion but it is still a for profit company. Meaning Weinberg wants to make bucks too. If Chrome is worth $50bn what does that make ddg worth? If Google get slapped with an anti-trust and forced to break up, who might benefit from the big bucks that might be floating around? And ever noticed how CEOs tend to fail up? Fluffing google is a nice advert for the next head of google search here.
Show me monetisation strategies, and hence value per user for the installed base if you want to claim that kinda figures imo
I agree with you, I may be even more cynical than you with respect to senior executives’ public statements and corporate PR.
I just don’t see a clear motive for the DDG CEO to inflate the valuation of Chrome. The examples you cite seem a bit far fetched (to me), I could be wrong of course.
Chrome is worth $49 Billion, this asshole on the internet guesstimates.
Only if they monetise the hell out of it and sell people’s data.
