Comment by adrian_mrd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adrian_mrd | Hacker News Reader

The best way to think of Chrome these days is that it is a Google web browser, as in, it preferences products and services made by Google.

Edge is similar in some ways, but modern Chrome is not a web browser per se but a web browser clearly built by Google with Google’s corporate interests at heart.

The disconnect for many - including myself - is that we remember the first few years of Chrome. How revolutionary it was and how it provided a beautiful path off ‘the terror’ that was Internet Explorer. Modern Chrome is not the same browser, philosophically. Modern Chrome is a Google web browser and integrates the best - and increasingly by default - with Google’s many products and services.

> The disconnect for many - including myself - is that we remember the first few years of Chrome. How revolutionary it was and how it provided a beautiful path off ‘the terror’ that was Internet Explorer.

Funny how history can be subjective. I remember Firefox in this exact role, several years earlier prior to Chrome, which is why I've never received Chrome as some kind of saviour, only as additional competition.

Totally agree re: Firefox also playing that role a decade or so ahead of Chrome, then losing it somewhat during Chrome's ascendancy: perceptions of bloat, slower dev releases, RAM hog on some PCs, no per-tab process isolation, etc

Software like chrome and iOS aren't built for people to use. They're built to insert commercial software into people's lives. Access to information or the ability to communicate with friends is given because it would be difficult to get people to accept it otherwise.

> Software like chrome and iOS aren't built for people to use. They're built to insert commercial software into people's lives.

iOS is designed to sell hardware, unlike Google's products.

That's why I'm getting Apple Music promotions when trying to listen to my locally saved music in Music app? Apple is not as annoying as other vendors, that's for sure, but they're not innocent and they certainly trying to sell some services as well.

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