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> Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good browser. It is good. But, I don't think it could have been that kind of wipeout without leveraging google's greater web dominance.

Google's marketing for Chrome was (and is) so aggressive that literally every single Google-owned web property asks you to install it for the "best experience." And more often than not, because Googlers never test for other browsers, Chrome does offer the best experience on Google sites. But that doesn't mean it's the best browser experience, which is a totally subjective metric based on an individual's preferences.

Regardless, Google pushed it so hard, bundled it with so much software, and threw it in users faces so much that most non-technical users probably would have ended up with it installed -- probably set to the default browser, because of more nagging -- regardless of Chrome's quality. Even now, as Google makes steps to neuter adblockers, the average user continues to use it. Why? Because they just don't know any better or care. And I can't blame them: it takes immense effort to even use Firefox now because of random sites based on Google tech that break in every other browser. Chrome is certainly the easy way out.

If you search for Firefox, Google says "did you mean Chrome?"

Edited to add: This has actually happened to me when setting up a new Windows PC for someone.

That's fuel for a millions dollars lawsuit by the European Commission.

Billions, if at all.

The EC recently ruled against Google in a "slam dunk" case about anti-competitive contracts with "search partners." €1.5bn & it barely got noticed.

Just tried searching for 'firefox' as a quick test.

I do get a page of Firefox results, but I also get a box titled 'People also ask' after the first four results, with the very first item being; 'Is Mozilla Firefox Safe to Download?' I also get a box at the bottom of the page titled 'Web Browsers,' with the first item in that box being Chrome. And Firefox is just not in that box at all. Not a popular enough web browser to include in the box marked web browsers when searched for by name, it would seem. On the other hand, UC Browser makes the list after Chrome, Opera and Safari, which I hadn't even heard of until today, but is apparently by Alibaba.

> And Firefox is just not in that box at all.

If you search for Chrome, Chrome will not show up in that box either. And the first browser in that box is, guess what, Firefox. You just searched for it, why include it in the box?

UC Browser is pretty popular in Asia. Statcounter reports 3% market share worldwide, right between Samsung Internet and IE.

>If you search for Chrome, Chrome will not show up in that box either. And the first browser in that box is, guess what, Firefox. You just searched for it, why include it in the box?

Oh, good catch, you are right. Is just a bad title for the box and does not appear to be in any way nefarious. 'Other Web Browsers' would be a lot less confusing.

Am still cocking an eyebrow at 'Is Mozilla Firefox Safe to Download?' though.

It isn't safe to download for the person asking that question.

I'm not sure if anything changed in a day, but I'm not getting that result at all (in fact, I'm not getting a "did you mean Chrome" either). The latter isn't explainable by me, but for the former... well, remember the search results are tailored to you (that's another pandora's box about echo chambers in itself) so perhaps you've been searching for more security-oriented things and that affects your results. In my case, the first page was mostly official Firefox links, wikipedia, and the very last result of the first page was "Google Just Gave 2 Billion Chrome Users A Reason To Switch To Firefox" so it doesn't seem like there's anything awry going on here.

I can't reproduce but I absolutely believe this has happened to you, given how much search results vary by person.

I would appreciate a screenshot if you can grab one, it would be funny to whip out in certain situations. (Doctoring a photo would be dishonest.)

That does not happen because you searched for Firefox. A dismissible popup suggesting you 'Switch to Chrome' appears if using IE to search with Google regardless of your search term.

It seems Microsoft is bit more egregious in Bing. If you search for Chrome or Firefox you get "Promoted by Microsoft - Microsoft Edge is the recommended browser for Windows 10 and it’s already installed on your PC."

...and if you change your default browser to anything else, you'll get endless "Try Edge!" messages in your notifications and even on your lock screen.

Microsoft's bad behavior does not excuse Google's bad behavior.

> IMO, during the IE6_v_FF days the feature and quality gap between browsers was at its highest. Much bigger than Chrome_v_FF ever was. Still Chrome today is far more dominant than FF ever was... except IE in its monopoly day.

The benefit needs to be worth the effort. Early on, in the days you refer to, browsers were often crappy and motivated switching often. I bounced between IE and FF a lot (and later chrome), because things were often broken/bad, or various websites I wanted to use didn't work in one or the other. However, in the last few+ years, that's not really true (in any way I notice) now.

Basically, I think the only improvements that can be made are incremental/marginal, and aren't enough to make switching browsers worth it. They're all pretty good now. So, I expect market share for browsers to change much more slowly now.

I'm afraid this time we'll need to switch before things start breaking, or otherwise less and less devs will bother testing on alternatives.

> They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome "default" option.

Don't forget their annoying bundling with freeware...

That's merely advertising. Google did not force chrome into any platform except android (which only happened after Chrome's dominance).

Mozilla could've paid for more advertising (e.g, partner up with Yahoo or some other big web property). But even with a push like that, FF won't have won because it didn't the high performance that drove Chrome's retention rate.

Tricking people into trojan-installing it shouldn't count as 'merely advertising'.

Calling it "advertising" is a understatement here. You don't end up with the product just by consuming an ad.

My parents never wanted to install Chrome. They still ended up have it. It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox. All their friends use Chrome also because of this despicable trick.

When this wave of bundled malware behavior by Google started and I had to uninstall it all over the people and family where I installed Firefox before, I stopped using it as a second browser too.

I whish someone would finally sue them for this. At least to give it the attention it should have.

> It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox

what update? Windows update? Or did they download some software, and the installer came with chrome as well?

Windows Update would have been the peak of madness...

No it was some other software where it came with the installer. I assume it was Avast as I've seen it in an update already on a different computer.

In the beginning, Chrome was bundled with Flash, and Flash was ubiquitous.

When you installed or upgraded Flash, unless you checked a checkbox, Chrome would be installed.

Funny how all it took was Steve Jobs saying "no Flash on the IPhone, it sucks" and that was the end of Flash. Thank God.

I wouldn't cheer some influential millionaire who decide it's time to kill some technology too loud. It may become a habit.

My personal experience is not what you are advertising here. I like Chrome because of the features unrelated to performance on Google's own assets - it simply has been the better browser. Yubikey support. Enterprise management capabilities. A robust extension ecosystem. Security. Better memory management for multiple tabs. Some of these are no longer a differentiator for Chrome, but Chrome got there first.

Firefox, IE, Opera have all been way late to the game on some or all of these features.

In the past I have been in the position to help make decisions on browser support at my company. We easily decided on Chrome because it was faster and more secure than IE, but more manageable than Firefox at an Enterprise level. Firefox is just starting to catch up to these feature sets. IE gave up. Safari is a literal running joke even amongst the most ardent of MacOS supporters at my company - features are simply non comparable.

I never once saw an incompatibility problem in Firefox that made me open Chrome. I currently run 2 browser sessions on my main computer - one in Firefox for personal use and one in Chrome for work use. I like and use Firefox, but Chrome has momentum.

Open Google or Youtube in Edge an you'll see a huge banner advertising Chrome. That use to happen for practically every other browser.

A company promoting their own products on their own websites is far from being criminal. Amazon.com right now just showed a giant splash for buying an Echoshow on their home page.

The difference is that Google has a near-monopoly in search. Amazon is a behemoth, but there are plenty of alternatives.

There are plenty of alternatives to Google as well.

Popularity != Monopoly

Imagine your bank, alphabank has 80% of personal bank accounts and 70% of auto insurance. When you check your transactions, you see a notice: "you could save up to x% by switching to alphacar."

That's the premise behind antitrust (even though in practice, its 50 years behind the times). If you have dominant market share, things that are otherwise lawful^ aren't anymore.

^Antitrust stuff like anti-competitive behaviour isn't criminal regardless.

That is _not_ antitrust.

It would be anti-competitive in your hypothetical if your bank refused to make transactions to your auto insurance company because it was not the bank's insurance company.

Pop-ups in your bank portal are uncomfortable but are not anti-competitive.

Oh yes, Yubikey support. Which Firefox also supports but The Almighty Google doesn't allow to use with Yubikey on their sites (same as Facebook etc.). Good job Google, that really motivated me to switch. (not)

And Firefox might be in a very different place if it wasn't tragically mismanaged to the point where every rational adviser for new computer users didn't have to say, "You can use Firefox, but these days it's slow and it's got terrible security problems."

They've turned the corner on that but it was very true for a long time, and during that time Chrome or Chromium became the default.

It is true that Google is pretty pushy with Chrome, but it's also true that FFox had years of time where it wasn't just obviously slower, it was obviously more dangerous.

I can't help but think this played a major factor in the resulting global bias towards Chrome.

>Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good browser. It is good.

It is not only good. When it came out it wiped the floor with the alternatives. Firefox 3, from that time, was absolutely pathetic in terms of performance. I remember sticking to 2 for a while. Even today Chrome is still the best, even if the margin has narrowed. Other browsers are having to adopt Blink to catch up.

Idk about wiped the floor, but it gets subjective.

Immediately before chrome launched, FF was slowly eating into IE's market share. Chrome was good, but so was FF.

I don't think chrome ever had a lead in FF anything like the lead FF had over IE. Mozilla always had to play with a disadvantage. Still do.

Was it Chrome that came up with tabs? i cant seem to remember if FF had it. If FF didnt have tabs, that is enough for me to say Chrome wiped out the competition.

Firefox had tabs before Chrome existed.

If memory serves Opera was the first browser that had tabs but they were also in Firefox by the time Chrome released.

yes, I remember Opera being first with tabs too. It was one of the main reasons people chose Opera IIRC

From Wikipedia (I first saw it using Galeon. I'm probably messing up history here but I think Epiphany was also early with tabs):

The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997. These were followed by a number of others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in 2000 (with the release of version 4 - although a MDI interface was supported before then), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into MultiZilla on 1 April 2001 (an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite[8]), Galeon in early 2001, Mozilla 0.9.5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.1 (now Mozilla Firefox) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)

FF had tabs. IE had already adopted them. Chrome worked a bit better with lots of tabs. Iirc, pre-chrome, a crash (usually flash) in one tab would crash the browser. Chrome fixed that.

And if birds didn't have wings, that is enough for me to say that squirrels are better at flying.

Opera was the first browser with any significant market share that supported tabs. I vividly remember switching to Opera somewhere in the 2000s for that very reason.

It also had working bookmark syncing way earlier than the others - that was the second reason for me to use Opera in the 2000-2010 timeframe. I eventually switched to Chrome when it got too good to ignore, and lately to Firefox when it got good enough to compete head-to-head with Chrome.

According to this site with a bit of link-documentation, FF was first and the Opera-claim is false.

https://allthatiswrong.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/opera-did-no...

Opera's technology may not have been tabs, but it allowed the rise of tabbed based browsing. It just used the technology of the time (having it's own windowed interface, which incidentally allowed a tab-like arrangement). It's a bit disingenuous to make the claim that Opera was not instrumental in the development of tabbed based browsing, even if it wasn't specifically using the tab technology earliest.

Anecdotal but I switched to Chrome when it came out because it's JS engine was (or at least felt) massively faster than Firefox's.

Agree.I used to use Firefox and even Opera back in the day.Then both started lagging, even opening a simple website was always with some issues.Then I thought 'OK', let's try Chrome.It was faster, more compatible with some standards and simply felt better. I don't know how Mozilla managed to screw it up so well..

So they make good product.

Bing can be Edge only too.

>However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising."

No. Their market share is wholly due to being a better browser. That is an absolutely true statement when it comes to Windows and PC. It gets muddled with Android, because there you can make a case that they push Chrome as a default browser.

>Firefox slowly climbed to the middle, by being very good. They never got to 50% of the market.

It was a different time. FF did wonderful work with moving to a standards-based web and breaking IE hegemony, but they got blindsided by Chrome's relentless drive to squeeze every frame of performance out of JavaScript and WebKit. That's the thing with Chrome, they were not only pushing web standards forward, but more importantly they were pushing performance and security in a way that FF could not follow. Around the time that Chrome came out, FF was starting to struggle with a legacy architecture and that made it impossible for them to keep up with Chrome.