Of all the crazy stuff that has been proposed on HN under the umbrella of "breaking up Google", excising the ad exchange might be the least technically challenging, and also one of the few that are economically practical.
Sell AdWords space just like everyone else, right? The tight integration between Search and Ads might be lost though, since they wouldn't be able to talk to each other the same way. I'd imagine that'd take a chunk out of revenue.
TBH I think if major browsers ceased development for 5 years with the exception of bug and security fixes, the web would only get better. Right now it's a race between their "improvements" and ever more complicated web frameworks. You don't ever get to really _master_ the web platform.
What competition is there for any of those services?
Bing, whatever MS brands Hotmail as these days, Yahoo, Firefox & Opera? They're all small potatoes. Apple mail and maps isn't really competition, either.
Similar problem in Asia, I believe, just different players.
