Comment by joshuamorton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshuamorton | Hacker News Reader

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> The modern web users don't have that option because google are far more dominant now than microsoft ever was.

At peak (in ~2003-2005) IE had over 90% of global browser market share. Chrome on desktop has between 60 and 70, and afaik less on mobile, and less in the US. So, no.

> That doesn't happen now, OSes "just work" and people aren't changing their browser.

Given that chrome doesn't come on any popular desktop OS by default, this seems unlikely. If people weren't changing their browser, Safari, FF, or Edge would be the most popular due to coming by default on OSX, most linux distros, and Windows by default. (how popular is CrOS?)

> No, given chrome's market share other browsers are forced to implement it or people will consider those browsers broken.

There's a pretty decent history of this not happening.

I also don't really think your idea of how the web was used is a true reflection of reality. I was an elementary school kid back in 2002 and was using netscape and IE 4? 5? at the time, in school. I certainly had no clue how to jump to firefox or opera, nor did I know how to re-install the OS. Nor did my teachers.

I don't think the average web user back then was as savvy as you're thinking. Perhaps the average web user you hung around was, but that's just your social circles.

> Chrome on desktop has between 60 and 70, and afaik less on mobile, and less in the US. So, no.

No, it has about 60% on both mobile and desktop, not counting the derivatives (like Edge and Opera). Considering that both of those markets grew significantly since IE6 days, that makes Chrome more dominant than IE ever was.

And you seem to assume that an average consumer installs stuff on his own after the OS installation, which is not the case with less tech-savvy people I know. They usually give it to someone a bit more tech-savvy to do post-install tasks, and those always include an installation of a different browser. Every single second-hand computer available in my country's market comes with a cracked version of Windows, MS Office and a different browser. Tech-savvy ones just reinstall the OS, non-tech-savvy ones continue using the defaults — the defaults set up by someone else.

> Considering that both of those markets grew significantly since IE6 days, that makes Chrome more dominant than IE ever was.

No. Dominance is a function of market share, not market size, that's silly. Otherwise I could argue that Firefox is also more dominant than IE ever was, since it's got more users than peak IE. Same with Safari. But then 3 browsers would simultaneously be more dominant than the one that controlled 95% of the market at its peak. Neat.

>> The modern web users don't have that option because google are far more dominant now than microsoft ever was.

>At peak (in ~2003-2005) IE had over 90% of global browser market share. Chrome on desktop has between 60 and 70, and afaik less on mobile, and less in the US. So, no.

The parent post was comparing Google and Microsoft, not just Chrome and IE.

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