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Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

Why'd they go out and download another browser if they don't understand the concept of a browser? Only Android comes with the Google browser as default browser as far as I know.

I think whatever the setupper of the computer dictates whatever Internet is, and secondarily the OS vendor if the new user doesn't have a tech friend.

I don't think Chrome is somehow == Internet for these people specifically. (Personally I call the shortcut "Internet" so it's consistent across devices and they don't have to recognize Lightning on their phone and Firefox on their laptop.)

The Google homepage on the other hand...

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Most Chrome users didn't actually install it. That's the case on desktops/laptops, but not on mobile, which is the segment that bought a lot of new people to the internet in the past few years.

Android is the most popular mobile OS (+70% of market share[0]) and most Android phones sold outside China come Google Apps/Chrome pre-installed. That's a lot of Chrome installations.

And now Chromebooks are selling like hot cakes (30M in 2020[1], a huge increase mostly because of the pandemic) and Chrome is the default browser there too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... [1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/02/01/chromebooks-continu...

Old folks don't download Chrome, their sucker children do. Those who are too frail to lift the koolaid cup to their mouths shall be aided by their brethren.

But also Chrome isn't super hard to install anyway and the dark patterns "help" with the process. Go on Google.com with MS Edge and it'll tell you Chrome will give you a faster, more betterer Internet. It must be pretty convincing to hear that from the de facto arbiter of the world wide web and all you have to do is follow the pretty blue buttons. I was able to install Roblox when I was 10 with less guidance.

Yeah. If I open Google docs with Gnome Epiphany, I get a message that says IE is no longer supported. IE? And until recently, Vivaldi had all sorts of issues on google websites, even though it’s chromium.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/

The shade in that blog post is immense.

> We also often encounter websites that block the exact string “Vivaldi”, with no contact or warning to us. This is particularly problematic when the larger technology behemoths (some of whom we directly compete with in the browser space) do this

To be fair, Edge is also "pushed onto" people, being a default install in Windows.

Not saying it's right how Chrome is pushed though. IMO, ideally there would be regulation requiring Windows to offer a fair choice of browser downloads (none preinstalled) when you set up the computer, and google wouldn't pull it's "faster, better browser" thing when visiting their search site.

> The Google homepage on the other hand...

The Google homepage for years said that web users should install Chrome and now almost everyone believes it.

Only Chrome on Android alone accounts for a big percentage of web traffic. Android is the most used mobile operating system, and nowadays there are more users that browse with a mobile device than users that use a PC.

Beside that, a lot of people is induced by Google to install Chrome. A lot of Google services doesn't work so well in browsers that are not Chrome. One of them is Google Meet, that is used in my country by a lot of schools. This is of course by design, there are no reasons Google couldn't make a software that works in all browsers.

In addition to the various Google pages telling the user to install Chrome, it's also sometime bundled in the installer of other free (as in beer) software, with the default option installing chrome and setting it as default web browser.

And chrome OS come bundled with chrome too.

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