True. Same for Android. I feel some form of that should be part of the approach. Splitting it carelessly would likely either:

A) result in no real change: ie. instead of allocating budgets within Google, they’ll just exchange money through deals and partnerships, as separate companies, but still having pretty much the same relationship between projects and level of control (Android & Chrome would continue favoring Google interests, even as independent companies), and they’ll keep being monopolies each within their own fields (I don’t see how that’s being addressed with the split).

B) result in independent projects that push for monetization and shady schemes to try and be profitable on their own (although, to be honest Mozilla has proven that being non-profit is not a shield against this either). This actually might be a good thing if the enshittification manages to get people to switch away from Chrome to a better alternative… but I wouldn’t be so sure of that (both that they would move, or that they’d choose a better one …as opposed to say MS Edge which has just as bad of a ruler).

It’s true that they say both things out of comfort.

Though to be completely honest, both statements are not contradictory. They are not necessarily accepting that they do have something worth hiding, but just stating that hiding is too difficult these days anyway. That does not mean (sadly) that they would start doing it were it easier, just that they have even less of a motive to care about it now that hiding is so much harder (to the point of almost being “a myth”).

I’m not saying they are right, I’m saying that lack of consistency is not the problem with that attitude. It’s not a “shift”, just a consistent continuation of a lazy attitude towards comfort.