The big test is not now, when Chromium discontinues content blockers, but when renewal of the contract with Google is up. For Google there is a big incentive in getting rid of ad blockers, and they have a lot of power over Mozilla being the party that is responsible for most of Mozilla's revenue.
I think Google has enough regulatory capture to not worry about anti-trust. In a perfect world, anti-trust would have broken up Google and Meta a long time ago. Our anti-trust investigations have been a joke since MCI. Think about it, USA is respectfully speaking a corporatocratic country; biting the hands that feed is in nobody's interest. John Q Public does not pay the bills and doesn't hold the most personal data and location of the majority of the inhabitants of this planet.
> In a perfect world, anti-trust would have broken up Google and Meta a long time ago.
I'd go even further, as the example of AT&T shows that just breaking up a monopoly is insufficient, as it can reform over time. In addition, (dis)incentives must be created to counter whatever led to the market failure in the first place.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act forbids attempts to establish a monopoly, regardless of the success or failure of such an attempt. Designing a system in which network effects tend toward monopoly (e.g. "Keep using our platform, because when your friends talk on this platform, it's the only way to hear what they're saying.") is an attempt to establish a monopoly.
Fair would be a fine such that Google/Alphabet would be better off had they not participated in the antitrust behavior. Anything below that is just subtle encouragement.
Fair would be sanctions, restructuring, legal consequence for those responsible for inaction in dividing the constituents of the conglomerate. Think Ma Bell, Standard Oil. 4B likely wouldn't even cover the vig on all that profit.
Fair would be a fine large enough to actually induce existential worry. A $4 billion fine isn't enough to make Google worried for their continued existence. They know they'll be fine.
In Europe. The question people were asking at the time is if the fine was great enough to cause google to abandon Europe. If they did, they might be able to abandon Mozilla with impunity since nobody else is likely to do anything about it.
There is a world somewhere between perfect and hopeless. It's this one.
And no, as bad as the big bad corporation is, nobody has the regulatory capture required to ward off an anti-trust lawsuit in guaranteed perpetuity. Among other things, the law would have already changed to not bother with anti-trust if it did. All it takes to upend the regulatory applecart is a change of the driver. And when that day comes, you want to have plausible deniability.
On top of all the other reasons that has never made sense, like Google paying Apple for the same reason or the years Yahoo were paying Mozilla, there's an ongoing antitrust case against Google where their payment for the Firefox default search is evidence against them.
Or to keep Google Search dominant, which is why they pay Apple $billions per year to be the default engine in Safari, a deal that may invite antitrust.
