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Comment by shadowfox | Hacker News Reader

I must say that it bothers me mildly too, having been through the latter half of the MS embrace-and-extend era as a professional.

On the other hand, the perception on HN seem to tend towards Google being immune to such power plays. Maybe they are right; I dont know.

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The difference between Google and Microsoft is their business model. Microsoft sells software, and so it's in their interest to lock users into Internet Explorer, and by extension Windows. Google sells advertisements. They don't actually care which browser you use, as long as you're using a Google service. There's no incentive (yet) for them to lock users into Chrome.

Chrome is tightly integrated with Google services and has a default search engine of Google. This seems plenty of, if not more, incentive.

FWIW Google pays Mozilla a lot of money to keep Google the default search engine on Firefox. They probably aren't too concerned if everyone switched to Firefox.

Of course they would be concerned if people switched to Firefox.

It's a business risk. Because what happens if Microsoft outbids Google and suddenly 1/3 of all browsers switch overnight to Bing.

My personal perspective is that Google wants people using performant, standards-compliant browsers. Doesn't matter who made it.

No. Google wants people to view and click their ads. That's how they make their money.

The only reason Chrome exists is because they know that most people just search using the text field in the top right corner of the browser.

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