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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Developers and computer geeks have been overestimating their influence for over a decade. If geeks were influential, the “year of the Linux desktop” would have been years ago, no one would be on Facebook, and people wouldn’t buy into Apple’s wall garden and people would care about “freedom”. Definitely no one would have bought the iPod since it “had less space than the Nomad and no wireless”. (https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...)

The consumerization of technology happened a long time ago.

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You can't talk about Chrome's market share without mentioning that it was (maybe still is? I don't know) prominently advertised on the google.com homepage.

Everyone who went to search Google saw the ad. It said something like "Try a faster browser"

The fact that Chrome was advertised on the most popular page in the world, and especially that it was the only ad on that page, definitely made a difference in adoption.

The quality of the dev tools has nothing to do with it.

Source? I don't remember such an ad.

Speaking as a dev, the dev tools had a ton to do with it.

The ad is still there, now it pushes the google app: https://twitter.com/ridiculous_fish/status/11810479664228556...

There’s also a popover div ad in gmail: https://twitter.com/ridiculous_fish/status/10810743891336806...

Here's a video that shows old Google homepages, the ad seemed to first appear sometime around 2013: https://youtu.be/LZ46uE267Nc?t=93

Disclaimer: I am the creator of the video

> Source? I don't remember such an ad.

I too remember seeing this ad every time on Google's search page, but it's hard to search for articles mentioning it now, because any search on keywords "google chrome ads" return completely unrelated results.

There are these old questions:

* https://support.google.com/chrome/forum/AAAAP1KN0B0FrX8mjNQu...

* https://support.google.com/websearch/forum/AAAAgtjJeM41xpRdM...

* https://support.google.com/chrome/forum/AAAAP1KN0B08liXq3dy9...

* https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-being-shown-ads-for-Google-Ch...

Also this news piece: https://www.techspot.com/news/79940-how-youtube-employees-ki... While the article is about Google advertising three different browser in that particular banner, you can see on the screenshot there is another ad, that is just for Google Chrome. That's the ad that was shown all the time on Google Search and Youtube.

Thanks! I guess the Chrome ads on Google/Youtube show the influence devs can have after all =)

Not sure what you mean, but as an anecdote I quit using desktop Linux years ago and whenever I go to developer conferences, the majority are on MacOS and I think I see more people on Windows 10 than on Linux.

That people wouldn't buy into Apple stuff is a big assumption, because we did do just that, for better or worse. Speaking of which, I see many more successful commercial desktop apps for MacOS than for Windows or Linux combined, even if Windows still has a much bigger market share. And this happened since before Apple's App Store for MacOS became a thing.

I was also one of Facebook's early adopters, many of my programmer friends were too. Being from Romania, let me tell you, the early adopters here were all software developers ;-)

There might be some bias in there.

" see many more successful commercial desktop apps for MacOS than for Windows or Linux combined"

Office profits by itself would crush all MacOS application sales.

Maybe it is easier for the single developer to create something profitable on MacOS but that's because the bigger players have marketshare over windows in the profitable niches.

Office has always been available for the Mac. How many indy developers and small shops outside of games really have been successful making software?

You can trivially pick out the macs visually how are you picking out who is running Linux?

> If geeks were influential, the “year of the Linux desktop” I don't see how that's relevant, if I set up or recommend Firefox on my parents computer with ad block they're going to trust me and use it over chrome/safari/edge. If I set up Linux instead of windows they're going to be extremely confused, annoyed and won't let me touch their computer again..

Geeks are extremely influential to their non technical friends but why would you ever impose Linux on them? I don't see how it would benefit them and you'd have to deal with the endless fallout and questions that arise.

Dell once sold a “Developer Edition” laptop, so there is definitely a sizable market and developers do have some influence.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebo...

They still do: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/xps-13-7390...

Damn, that's kind of a nice laptop. Pretty tempting actually, though I'd probably install Windows on it personally.

I was curious what specs made it "developer"-mode, and it looks like it's just a really big battery, very bright screen with good viewing angles, and easy to open with one hand (and a stable screen when you're moving around with it). Seems like it's specifically aimed at devs that work remote jobs and might be working outside from time to time?

Still, neat idea.

They still sell a Linux variant of the XPS series, which works mostly fine. It's not a patch on the X1 Carbon, but it's functional.

All geeks don't hate FB and Apple. Your vantage point may be too far. Chrome's dev tools did have a lot to do with its rise in use among devs.

I think you're overestimating how unpopular those things are with devs/geeks. As a current (comp sci) college student, I can say that while less popular than in the general public - Windows, Facebook, and Apple's ecosystem are still used by a large number of my peers.

Over a decade? Try 3, and that is in the conservative side.

> Developers and computer geeks have been overestimating their influence for over a decade. I

It's a lot easier to get people to switch browsers than OSs.

One is a click or two. The other feels like you are breaking this expensive machine.

When someone buys a computer that works after turning it on switching oses seems risky.

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