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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> Google is using much less annoying banners to promote its browser. More importantly, only on its own websites!

In fairness, they only show the message on their website, but their website is most people's home page, and it is how most people would find an alternative browser in the first place. It's debatable whether it's actually less visually annoying.

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People forget that when Chrome first came out, Google was paying to have it bundled alongside antivirus updates, and pretty much every other place they could shove it in.

At some point I gave up switching my mother's computer back to Firefox, there was no way I could keep Chrome off of her machine, it just kept getting installed.

And before that it was the google toolbar. Literal spyware.

Toolbar was made back when IE lacked a search bar and omnibar wasn't even considered of.

Not sure if you mean this as an excuse? Because it isn't.

Let’s not forget Chromeframe

Chromeframe was back when IE 6/7 were still commonly used yet couldn't support "modern" HTML5/JavaScript functionality because Microsoft gave up on web standards. It was a workaround but not a particularly evil one imo.

Wow, I actually had forgotten that.

Lol! I can’t even use Google anymore because half the screen asks me to sign in even when I’ve repeatedly denied to do so when searching in Safari on iOS. I simply use DDG now.

Exactly. This is such a weird half-assed defence of Google. It’s like saying you should be grateful cos they only shot you once not twice.

I don't know how they didn't get fined for their decade-long Chrome spam campaign. They even used to bundle it with other software downloads, a la Ask Toolbar

I tend to block these elements via ublock's node selector. I do thr same on youtube for all their "context" boxes that try to lie to you via appeal to authority.

Is Google most Edge users home page?

It's not even most people's home page - a truly depressing chunk of Internet use comes from the Google search bar on phone home screens.

> In fairness, they only show the message on their website,

And all of their apps which conveniently "firget" user selection: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1625756307297914883

Wait, so if you live next to a busy road you must be ok with me posting lawn signs for my desired candidate on your front yard because everyone sees your front yard and not mine.

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