Hacker News Reader

Comment by sidyapa | Hacker News Reader

How would an argument against Chrome this even hold up? Google has decoupled the technology from the distribution. The chromium browser is open source, any body can build on it and many companies have. The platform where chrome is pre-installed doesn't prevent the use of other browsers and underlying technologies unlike Apple. How does consumer preference make one a monopoly when moving away from chrome is not difficult at all as you have no lock-ins

View on HN

Have you ever used another browser and seen a "This site works better in Chrome, download now" on a Google property?

They do it even to other Chromium based browsers. They degrade the experience on Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge, persistently nagging people to switch browsers.

That persistent nagging has an impact, especially for non-technical users who might only understand that Google, YouTube, Google Maps, or another Google property they trust is telling them that Chrome is better. Well, if Google is saying it, it must be true, right?

And that's not even mentioning the ways in which Google has degraded the experience in more tangible ways by turning off features for mobile browsers, fighting app compatibility on Windows Phone to the point of breaking Google Maps - literally just serving an inferior experience and using user agent detection to impair Windows Phone - or blocking the YouTube API on the device.

I just opened up google.com on Edge and this popped up in the top right corner:

"Switch to Chrome for Windows

Built for Windows. Hide annoying ads and protect against malware on the web."

I then went to maps.google.com:

"Google recommends using Chrome Try a fast, secure browser with updates built in"

I then went to news.google.com:

"Google recommends using Chrome Try a fast, secure browser with updates built in"

That was just a fresh first sign in experience, and as I understand it, these prompts recur - I still see them occasionally on my primary browser, Firefox!

Have you ever used another browser and seen a "This site works better in Chrome, download now" on a Google property?

I find it hard to blame Google or Chrome for that. It's a developer (or business) choice.

Why do you find it hard to blame Google (the business behind Chrome) for making a business decision of pushing for Chrome installation? This is a straightforward relationship.

I didn't say I agreed with that[1]. All I said was developers making websites that only work in Chrome is the devs fault; it's not Chrome's problem.

[1] As it happens Google advertising Chrome on Google websites seems fairly reasonable to me, but anyway.

An independent developer - sure. But Google developers should not be actively making other browser's access worse. (They did)

[1] As it happens Google advertising Chrome on Google websites seems fairly reasonable to me, but anyway.

This is the very definition of monopoly abuse: Using your monopoly in one market (search) to push into another market (browsers). Exactly what got Microsoft in trouble in the 90s... and looking at firefox marketshare, it's having exactly the same results.

Honestly i haven't. Last time i regularly saw that sort of thing it was MSIE vs netscape navigator.

*as a firefox user. I imagine if i used something really obscure it would happen more often.

As a Firefox user, I regularly see sites that ask me to switch over to Chrome. Even some very mainstream open-source projects only support Chrome properly.

They also serve more Captchas, and more complex Captchas to non-chrome browsers

Well that's quite ironic haha. I mean, Chrome has more built-in tracking to deduce you're a human.

I've dealt with this so many times.

On Chrome, no captchas. On other browsers, I've literally gone through 5 minutes of fire hydrant selection with no end in sight. Sometimes it'll simply reject it and tell me to start again a dozen times, and other times it's just infinitely adding more.

I really want there to be a third party captcha system that isn't just a covert push into Google's filthy, corrupt, incompetent ecosystem.

CloudFlare's switch to bCaptcha or whatever it's called has made that experience much more pleasant when using non-Chrome browsers, because you can install the Privacy Pass addon and see them much less frequently

Even the freaking Gmail app for iOS has a convenient "bug" where it keeps forgetting your browser selection and suggesting you download Chrome and use that instead of Safari.

Wow, it seems like anybody else would get their app promptly revoked without recourse

Is that a Gmail bug or an iOS bug?

Browser selection in the iOS Gmail app has been broken forever. If you select "Chrome" it opens links in iOS Chrome. If you select "Safari" it opens links in an in-app webview which doesn't share cookies with actual Safari.

This webview behavior seems to be common across a lot of apps. I habitually tap the Safari icon on the bottom right of the webview to get into the Safari app. I had the impression that iOS must require this, perhaps to prevent an app from being able to effectively pollute the user’s global cookies, or to prevent broken UX when the user has some existing global cookie that changes website behavior in a way the developer doesn’t expect. It’s annoying to have to tap out of the webview to avoid repeated logins, but I could imagine it being the least-bad solution to a more complicated problem. Maybe a less confusing way to present it would be for the webview to open in a private tab?

I'm skeptical that Apple is imposing this on them. Many apps (Reeder, Reddit, Discord, Toot!) have an option to toggle between opening links in an in-app webview or Safari.

Reeder's options are "In-app browser," "Safari," and "Firefox" on my device.

I suspect this is a very deliberate decision.

Use Chrome -> everything works perfectly Use Safari -> enjoy your deliberately degraded experience

On my Gmail app it opens a Safari webview every time. I see in the Gmail “Default apps” settings there’s a “Ask me which app to use every time” slider. Maybe you have that turned on?

It doesn't happen every time, it asks again maybe once a month, or maybe after OS updates or something. That setting is definitely off.

Pro tip: the google product sites tend to be more well behaved then the apps and don't nag like this. Usually all you lose is notifications.

I don't think that matters as much as Chrome's market share, and the way they assert control in order to do things like disable ad blocking plugins.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com