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Comment by gardaani | Hacker News Reader

Yep. Google Chrome is not a web browser anymore. It is a portal to Google's services.

If you want to use a web browser, then use Firefox.

That’s pretty much the reason Google has a browser in the first place. Most normal users don’t really grok the difference between ”browser” and ”Google” anyway.

>Most normal users don’t really grok the difference between ”browser” and ”Google” anyway.

I doubt that. With the marketshare on Windows it is very likely, that people deliberateley install Chrome. So they know what a browser is, now that they have at least 2 installed.

Don't forget a lot of people got Chrome side loaded from installing something else (most likely Flash).

Google push Chrome crazy hard whenever you touch a Google service, and they have a crazy bundling game in play - they bundle with flash, acrobat reader, some free A/V products - wherever they can get marketshare.

Plus some pre-built PCs come with Chrome preloaded.

To expand on that, every single person I know who has actively tried to avoid Chrome, have all been fairly technical, but still somehow been lured into installing Chrome, at least once if not more.

If I remember correctly, that's what Google said when Chrome was introduced. Browsers at that time did not adequately support their services, so they made their own browser.

if you want to use a web browser - use Brave browser.

Which uses Chromium under the hood adding to the Chrome render engine monoculture.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. A render engine monoculture makes web dev easier---if I could have all the hours back I spent on taking perfectly working code on Safari and Chrome and making it work on Firefox, I'd take them in a heartbeat.

Not to mention buying into their really gross ad-replacement scheme.

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