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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

No, the difference is that you actually know what a browser is. "Google" is still a common reply to "what browser do you use?".

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how is that not a valid response? sure, it's not semantically accurate.

but, if someone says that, you know exactly what they mean. seems like a valid response to me any way you slice it.

p.s. this kind of attitude is part of the problem.

> seems like a valid response to me any way you slice it.

How so? It does not tell you if it's Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera or Safari. My mom refers to the Internet as "google".

> My mom refers to the Internet as "Google".

that's how she browses the internet then? in her case the application wouldn't matter to greatly if her point of reference is the Google search box

If it's a matter of security, speed, or an issue with how a particular website is rendered, knowing that somebody uses "google" as a web browser is of little help when attempting a diagnosis, regardless of their point of reference.

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you misunderstood the post you were replying to. It seems that what your parent post was saying is that people respond that they use "Google" as in "Google search" (whether on Firefox or IE or Chrome or Opera or..), not as in "Google Chrome". THAT mistake is far from just a semantic issue, but demonstrates a lack of understanding of what a browser is, or even its existence as something discrete from the websites they use.

To make the example clearer, I've personally had the experience of asking someone what browser they use and getting "Yahoo" (as in the Yahoo.com homepage) as an answer.

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