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Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

The actual issue is that Google pushes Chrome on its properties “this site renders better with Chrome download here” so it’s almost impossible for users to avoid it. Same issue with Edge. Once you switch off of Safari on macOS that’s the last you hear of it. If anything should be illegal it’s using your dominant position in one market to force users into a specific position in an adjacent one. MS got busted for it previously. Google under threat now. Apple has its own issues but it isn’t currently entirely owning a market. If Ape owned the phone market and the only App Store was Apple’s, I think the court would start ruling against Apple.

There’s also a clear conflict of interest having the advertising company own the user-agent.

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Case in point: Google's attempt at casually turning every user into a renter of their own devices via Web Environment Integrity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity under the false pretense of protecting sites against bots. Google is continuously implementing more and more draconic control of users and their hardware, and they keep using security as the argument. It is now de facto impossible to run an open source build of Android, like LineageOS, without also losing access to a wide range of apps which refuse to run without a hardware attestation from Play Integrity API.

Chrome is not enough at all; Google also needs to sell off Android.

> Chrome is not enough at all; Google also needs to sell off Android.

Then Apple should need to sell ios.

I firmly believe that there should be no vertical integration between hardware and OS manufacturers for general purpose computing, so yes, I hold that position as well. Having private control over your general purpose computing device should be considered a human right. Apple has a similar control over their hardware and software stacks, but they have been like this from the beginning and have never pretended that the users actually owned their devices.

General purpose computing devices are so ubiquitous in society that accepting that private companies have total control over how they are used should be considered a democratic issue.

In the thread of the argument, Apple does not hold a monopoly on web advertising, though.

Apple’s entire business is building compute devices.

This is definitely a huge part of it. My grandmother is not tech savy, and ended up with the google app installed on her phone. Because if she types anything into any of the search bars, google puts a big banner for the google app in the results page. She doesn't use safari for searching - she now goes to the google app.

Notably - it doesn't advertise chrome there? or maybe she just didn't see those. Most of her internet experience is through either the facebook app or the google app now

Wasn't she just searching google via safari anyway? I do find that popup really annoying though.

They not only officially own the user-agent which they made sure is the most installed.

They are gray cardinals of web standards which they bloated to the point of zero viable competition. And their only opponent lives on their couch.

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