People defend the walled garden of Apple.

But I think it's just post purchase rationalization.

harmful is google purposefully blocking their properties to mobile edge when everything worked with changed U/A string.

Concerning at best, since they're using first party grounds for advertising but that does not make it harmful.

Have you tried using Translate for a web page recently, instead of just a couple sentences of text? Some time ago, they removed that functionality, instead instructing users to use a browser with native translation capabilities to translate pages. It's a pretty blatant push to get people over onto Chrome.

> all of these properties work just fine and have not tried to push Chrome.

Historically Google has relentlessly advertised Chrome to Firefox users on Youtube and their main search page ... probably the most valuable advertising space on the Internet. Maybe they've cut back, for some or all users.

Or you've grown immune to it, because I work on Windows and occasionally setup new VM builds to test things and I always get these banners.

What's even worse is that their CAPTCHA stuff prefers chrome/chromium users off the bat with reliability scores.

It does on my S8, try any google website and you'll get notifications and I've even gotten emails every time I sign in on a device with a gmail ID but don't have the google apps on that device.