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Comment by mirashii | Hacker News Reader

> and that Google mandates the browser be Chrome and the search be Google for all Chrome web browsers (largest desktop market share) and Android devices (largest mobile market share)

No, they don't. You're free to use any browser on your desktop. You're free to use any browser on your Android device. And you're free to go into Chrome settings and use any search engine in Chrome on any of these devices.

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And much the same could be argued about Microsoft and IE. Yet everyone but Google Chrome failed to overtake IE.

Defaults are powerful things, as so very few take the time to change them.

Chrome overtook IE because it is (or at least at the time, was) a superior product.

And the same could be said about Firefox, yet it never happened.

Damn it, since Firefox canceled their deal with Google the latter has taken to pitching Chrome whenever a Firefox user visits Google.com.

Are you even remotely surprised, digi_owl?

Yeah, an advertisement on the most popular web site in the world stating "Download the faster browser" has nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

Years of cleaning malware off Windows PCs has taught me that average users will click on anything that offers to make their computer faster.

Only partly. Much was peer pressure. Much was Google's homepage selling it to you.

> And much the same could be argued about Microsoft and IE. Yet everyone but Google Chrome failed to overtake IE.

If you believe statcounter, Firefox is actually really really close to overtaking IE http://gs.statcounter.com/

In my part of the world (Europe) there has been a kind of triple point in March 2012 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200807-201504 Chrome and FF overtook IE, then Chrome kept growing, FF and IE kept falling with FF maintaining an edge over IE.

The fact that you are free to use a competitor has no relevance at all.

Perhaps it doesn't in the antitrust case, but in the context of a response to a comment with false statements implying the opposite, it does.

They do mandate that it be the default for Android devices.

For Android devices with Google services

Which is the vast majority of android devices sold outside China, and is exactly the kind of bundling that antitrust actions are interested in.

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