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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> That's the way it has to be.

What? Why? I assure you that's not how Google thought of it when they were facing off against Firefox and IE. They were putting Chrome installers in every SourceForge download and telling you to install Chrome when you searched Google. Why should their competitors lie down and let Chrome roll over them?

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For one, people still had the decision to download Chrome even if it was advertised heavily. Apple forces Safari on all their iOS users since all the browsers have to use WebKit.

> Apple forces Safari on all their iOS users…

Lots of people use non-Safari browsers on iOS (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Brave, DuckDuckGo), and iOS lets you choose your default browser. I know you know Safari <> WebKit, but 99.99% of users don't know or care about the plumbing.

All the real browsers have been banned. Ask any browser vendor. The rest are basically Safari skins.

Again, users don’t really care about the plumbing.

Chrome went from WebKit to Blink.

Safari spiritually went from KHTML to WebKit.

IE went from Trident to EdgeHTML to Blink.

Opera went from Presto to Blink.

The identity of the browser is the chrome, ba dum tiss.

By your own definition Edge is different from Chrome because it reskinned Chrome. So, all browsers on iOS are different browsers for the same reason

Apple was very similar in that regard as well. They were putting Safari installers in iTunes updates. People bought a new iPod and needed a new version of iTunes to sync with it? Magically they have now Safari installed.

And they were pushing it at a time when Safari for Windows was slower than Internet Explorer.

Did the Chrome installers install themselves? Besides, if users were already using other browsers, installing Chrome wouldn't have affected their existing browser's functionality. It was their choice to try out the new browser, and they could always go back to their old browser if they so desired.

Yes Chrome installers install themselves. Chrome is bundled with installers for unrelated products, and you have to deliberately uncheck it to not install it. Example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/antivirus/comments/on99mk/avg_antiv...

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