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Comment by user812 | Hacker News Reader

The new Google Chrome design with version 69 marked the beginning of a new era – Google wants to portray Chrome as something that is way more than a browser. They want you to see it as the primary interface of the web.

This is what the average user wants. All complex functionality has been put in the background. Cross-platform integration has been perfected.

Give it a year and users around the world will no longer think of Chrome as a browser, but simply as the interface to the (Google-)Web.

With Chrome Google has succesfully defeated Apple, MS and Mozilla.

And Google will continue to do everything to make people stop thinking of Chrome as a browser. They want you to think of it like a window into your online life, a window that is the same no matter where you are or what device you use.

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> They want you to think of it like a window into your online life, a window that is the same no matter where you are or what device you use.

And that's a terrible loss for human civilization. They are going to destroy the open, decentralized Web to build a walled garden for Google to cater to some hypothetical "average user". It's truly absurd.

That might all accurately describe what they'd like to achieve, but fortunately we still live in a free market society where there's room for competition (and if there isn't, regulators often step in).

I don't find Google to be the best search experience anymore. It gives me too many ads and partnership deals. I use searx.me and it gives me good old fashioned organic web search with results that are just as good.

Plenty of alternatives exist to their other services as well which only get better every year. I'm now convinced Google has a hard fight ahead of them just to keep what they've already got.

searx.me - I like, but no URL's for SERP's and browser navigation (back-button) doesn't work.

The dream of AOL.

> This is what the average user wants

I'd say it's what the average user was tricked into. In first years of existence Chrome was smuggled as "additional software offer" along with default browser setting in many software installers - that's how it mainly became popular. The typical computer user wouldn't notice the difference of new web browser presence (tho, the initial panic - "where are my bookmarks/passwords" could and did happen) and thus, as you're saying will accept that Chrome is the Web interface.

> With Chrome Google has succesfully defeated Apple, MS and Mozilla.

I'd say they managed to accomplish what MS couldn't with IE years ago - they had dominant position but not the quality and that's what Google with Chrome has achieved. I'm still "crying" after Opera decision of moving from Presto to Webkit/Blink - without it there's little to no competition at all between two remaining meaningful players. Nowadays it's Firefox with Gecko/Quantum vs Chrome along with all its's copies using Blink; an artificial homogenization of browsers market has happened - stimulated by shady marketing actions (mentioned bundling within installers).

Did Google really defeated Apple on iOS devices?

When I think about it, no.

People make the decision between different ecosystems, and Apple and Google are the biggest. Apple has a tight control over Safari on iOS. Safari has been defeated on Desktop though.

I disagree. Safari way outperforms Chrome on MacOS while using considerably less battery.

I know, it's behind on some features/standards though.

I am only talking about marketshare.

Not only is it missing a lot of features, many of the features it has implemented are buggy to the point of being unusable. Try speeding up an HTML5 video for a quick example of something people often do that is not implemented correctly in Safari.

I work with many not very technical mac users who mostly use apple provided apps like mail, notes, reminders and icloud. Only thing everyone installs is Chrome.

Safari desktop is quite dead.

I do use Safari on the Mac (and Firefox for some things). Safari uses resources far more efficiently, it has a reader view, and its layouting doesn't make the page jump around quite as much as other browsers do.

Many websites are barely usuable in Chrome but acceptable in Safari.

Sources on any of this?

"With a smarter Chrome, you will be able to do more than just look at a webpage. Imagine searching on Chrome for a singer you just heard, and having Chrome show you not just their bio, but also their upcoming concert near you and where to purchase tickets. With AI, Chrome will also better understand what you’re trying to get done, and help you do so faster. Vacation planning typically requires juggling multiple tabs and open documents. But as Chrome evolves to better understand what tasks you’re trying to get done, it can help manage all this complexity for you as you switch back and forth between hotel research and booking flights.

When we first launched Chrome, Sundar said: “We think of the browser as the window to the web.” A decade later, it’s still the tool people use to access all of the websites and applications that help them do what they want to do. As Chrome heads into the next 10 years, we want to expand that window—so you can see more and do more."

- https://www.blog.google/perspectives/rahul-roy-chowdhury/hap...

Nice, this is actually exactly the sort of thing I’ve been wishing for. Except for the part where Google gets to collect all of our data. But that is a temporary problem I think. Eventually these sorts of things will be available to us as completely open source and self-hosted software.

Which is all great until it gets it wrong, and you have to fight against it. Just this morning I was trying to google a specific car problem, and it decided I was actually looking for a different problem. Had to rephrase my search many times for it to give me what I wanted. I wish there was a search modifier that turned off all the cleverness.

There used to be. It was called "verbatim" search. I can't seem to find it anymore.

Quoting the exact phrase gets you a similar result, though.

Click 'Tools', then 'All results', choose 'Verbatim'. It's a terrible design, but it's still there.

It is sad that Google is so deep into the rabbit-hole that they think people will share their enthusiasm for a future of AI-driven user-focused ads.

> users around the world will no longer think of Chrome as a browser, but simply as the interface to the (Google-)Web

The funny thing is the only country free from that (Google-)Web is China.

Well the more some for-profit company wants me to push around to their vision of the future and milk me for more and more data from my private life, the more I will resist. It comes naturally, doesn't it for you?

It is a good browser, it may be even the best for some things, but it ain't so good compared to rest I will stop using Firefox, especially on mobile.

The more they push, the less I use their services (openstreet|opentopo, duck).

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