Yahoo, once an Internet powerhouse, is only a shadow of its former self. This is not keeping company officials from working on new products and services to restore some of the former glory of the company.
Yahoo, apparently has been working on a browser prototype for the past couple of months and expressed interest in acquiring Google Chrome in a “from zero to hero” type of scenario.
The information was revealed on the fourth day of Google’s antitrust trial. Yahoo is not the only company that expressed interest in acquiring Chrome. The AI companies OpenAI and Perplexity have also expressed interesting in buying the world’s most popular web browser.
General manager of Yahoo Search, Brian Provost, testified before the court that about 60 percent of all search queries were made through web browsers. Chrome, the leading browser on mobile and desktop, is responsible for the bulk of these searches.
On desktop, Google Chrome has a market share of over 66 percent according to Statcounter. Since Google owns Chrome and has made Google Search the default search engine, it is fair to say that the bulk of searches that originate from browsers is flowing through Google Search. Google has also struck deals with Apple and Mozilla to make its search engine the default.
While Yahoo is prototyping a browser, it is in discussions with “other companies about buying a browser”. Provost did not reveal the names of the companies. An acquisition would speed up the entire process.
Yahoo would replace the default browser with Yahoo Search to push its own search engine to new heights. Interestingly enough, Yahoo Search is powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It still has a market share of about three percent.
Now You: If Google is forced to sell Chrome, which company would be your favorite to buy the browser?
“If Google is forced to sell Chrome, which company would be your favorite to buy the browser?”
EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (lol).
Seriously, as long as Chrome gets out of the hands of Google, I really don’t care. I would nevertheless prefer to know that the omnipotent browser lands in the hands of a non-major corporation, but such an entity cannot afford laying an expected 50 billion dollars.
I don’t use myself Google products nor services, be noted.
I’m not sure that it was worth wasting the power it took to charge the pixels for this article. Yahoo is beyond irrelevant, and given their lousy privacy policies, hardly who anyone would want to end up owning Chrome – whch they can’t afford anyway.