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It you go the extra mile and actually disable Chrome on Android, even Google apps will start making calls to Firefox as the browser. It makes for a much better experience, otherwise Google apps don't honor the default browser choice in many circumstances.

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You don't even need to "disable" Chrome. Just set Firefox as the default browser. I haven't noticed any Google apps that wouldn't respect the setting.

Google news app insists on opening in a chrome-based webview without ad blocking. Large part of why I rooted to get adaway.

Interesting, Google News app isn't even available here. I suppose you're from the US where they can do more shady stuff.

This is called chrome custom tabs, and there are a number of reasons they are better than webview.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/custom-tabs/

Firefox for Android supports custom tabs and will be used if it's your default browser. The Google News app doesn't use Android custom tabs.

I don't have any Google apps with this problem (I don't use mentioned below Google News). My biggest problem so far are apps without setting "Use external browser to open links".

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