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Comment by dagaci | Hacker News Reader

Every time i open google-owned website in the Edge browser i get popup telling me to download or install Chrome

But I already have Chrome installed and use Chrome 90% of the time. I just find fantastically irritating to be badgered every time i don't use it. Now i see they are upping the ante and disabling accessing services because of corporate rivalry...

Amazon/Apple/Google are all engaging in this kind of passive aggressive low-level battle where they use their own consumers as weapons to fight each other and its a method that unfortunately works

I just hope that there will be some kind of backlash against this practice in the future, but given the level of Amazon-Apple-Google fanboism going around i'm really doubting it..

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Microsoft is also part of this battling, if you use chrome, and oh well try to search some windows api doc help on microsoft site, there will be "Try edge now! its faster than chrome".

Actually when you reinstall windows10, and open up browser, the first thing the browser does, is show some marketing about how much faster edge is than chrome and firefox.

The browser thing was really just to illustrate a starting point. I was going to mention Microsoft in the same breath, but Microsoft isn't important because they are kinda lost in the consumer space i feel.

And surprisingly Microsoft hasn't actually limited me with the apps i can use, services or buying physical products with

Today you have the closed-app store system's, restricted services to preferential devices and not even being able to buy products from one of the world largest outlets. They do this because in the past these companies have gained loyalty and now use that loyalty like cattle funneling customers away from competitors

It's not just "now". They've been blocking features outside of Chrome for years. Just simple user-agent check to disable something here and there and show an ad.

This has long being the case for Opera browser in Presto age (before they switched to Chromium), but when Firefox' market share started to shrink considerably Google started giving them the same Opera treatment.

It's especially annoying for desktop versions of Google web offerings. When asked about it Google cite "low market share" as a reason for lack of support, but if one excludes mobile browsers FF still has a very respectable userbase on desktops.

And yes, just as in Opera days a User Agent switch magically lets you in and everything continues to work.

I honestly don't get why they continue with these practices. Chrome quickly approaches a monopoly position in browser space, and there are precedents what happens after. Besides, Mozilla and Google often align their interests in various standards groups and together push a common agenda for Web technology progress. I don't see why Google treats Mozilla as an enemy.

With old Presto Opera there was a valid stance of "it might not work and we are not going to test it". But with current Opera, or Vivaldi, and I'm sure many others, it should just work, since they are all Chromium based.

By the way, fun fact, old Opera had huge "compatibility" javascript where they fixed either general or specific issues that were result of developers not caring about the browser. Opera had over 50% share in certain markets at the time.

To be fair, there's no way for the website to know you already have Chrome installed. The annoying popup is just bad UX.

It's called competition...

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