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Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

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Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#151

Post by javagram »

cletus wrote: post #146

It's hard to believe what a behemoth Chrome has become when it was only announced in 2008. What makes this even more amazing is it did this when IE/Edge ships as standard on Windows (which seems to be ~80% marketshare) and Safari ships as standard on OSX/iOS. It wasn't until Android 4.1 (2012) that Chrome even shipped on Android. Chrome did several things really well out of the gate: - Auto update. Words can't adequa…

> - The Omnibar. To this day, FF persists with the two-box model where one is technically for URLs and the other for search. No one wants that of course so search basically works in the URL box. Why they don't just merge this is beyond me.

Privacy. Google doesn't worry about privacy, of course, but firefox tries to avoid sending all the URLs you ever type to google or your alternate search suggestion provider.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#153

Post by Wowfunhappy »

anewhnaccount2 wrote: post #60
dalbasal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. " They did make a good browser. However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising." They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome the "default" option. It's a dominance breeds dominance cycle... a hallmark of modern monopoly. Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good brow…

If you search for Firefox, Google says "did you mean Chrome?" Edited to add: This has actually happened to me when setting up a new Windows PC for someone.

I can't reproduce but I absolutely believe this has happened to you, given how much search results vary by person.

I would appreciate a screenshot if you can grab one, it would be funny to whip out in certain situations. (Doctoring a photo would be dishonest.)

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#154

Post by danielnesbitt »

anewhnaccount2 wrote: post #60
dalbasal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. " They did make a good browser. However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising." They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome the "default" option. It's a dominance breeds dominance cycle... a hallmark of modern monopoly. Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good brow…

If you search for Firefox, Google says "did you mean Chrome?" Edited to add: This has actually happened to me when setting up a new Windows PC for someone.

That does not happen because you searched for Firefox. A dismissible popup suggesting you 'Switch to Chrome' appears if using IE to search with Google regardless of your search term.

It seems Microsoft is bit more egregious in Bing. If you search for Chrome or Firefox you get "Promoted by Microsoft - Microsoft Edge is the recommended browser for Windows 10 and it’s already installed on your PC."

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#155

Post by javagram »

majkinetor wrote: post #137

Great time for Microsoft to open source its Edge engine. It sure seems like it works great and has no Google related problems so it can form base for future foss adventures.

Considering Edge is just an evolved Trident engine, open sourcing it would probably be very difficult. A 24-year-old proprietary software project may have commercially licensed parts inside it that aren't subject to open sourcing; MS has certainly made such deals in the past like the ZIP support in Windows Explorer being licensed from a third party.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#156

Post by ascagnel_ »

grenoire wrote: post #24
amelius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, also see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

Err... I don't see either of these are relevant to the Chrome situation, given that the competitors are (and have been) also free. These aren't applicable for markets of free goods and services.

> that the competitors are (and have been) also free

IE was free when Netscape Navigator was a paid product.

Chrome was free when Opera was a paid product.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#157

Post by woranl »

Firefox made a lot of strategic error mostly because they were arrogant. Not implementing the Filesystem API is one of many. The world will simply move on without you. It’s very unfortunate how bad decisions screwed up the web.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/why-no-filesystem-api-in-f...

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#158

Post by Theodores »

My problem with Chrome extends to Google's general stewardship of the web, including search.

I wish to qualify my complaint by acknowledging that Google have done tonnes of brilliant stuff, Chrome included. However, one can be over-awed by the brilliance and not see what is being missed.

A few years ago HTML5 came along with better elements than the humble div to describe content in a page. These new elements, e.g. section, aside, article, main, header, footer and nav, are what web pages should be written with. But Google are okay not really caring about HTML elements. They can sift through tag soup for search and therefore how well a page is written is of no consequence for them.

Chrome does support the new elements absolutely fine but the dev tools that we use and the things like Lighthouse are about metrics that matter to Google and don't concern quality HTML. This enforces a cargo cult mentality and we have 99% of the web bloated by markup that is quite hard to write and to debug. If Lighthouse audit reminded you that the div element was 'element of last resort' according to the spec and knocked a few percentage points off your score for accessibility if your page only used divs then that would encourage people to write decent HTML using the full element vocabulary.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#159

Post by Krasnol »

chii wrote: post #139
Krasnol wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it "advertising" is a understatement here. You don't end up with the product just by consuming an ad. My parents never wanted to install Chrome. They still ended up have it. It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox. All their friends use Chrome also because of this despicable trick. When this wave of bundled malware behavior by Google started and I had to uninstall it all over the people and…

> It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox what update? Windows update? Or did they download some software, and the installer came with chrome as well?

Windows Update would have been the peak of madness...

No it was some other software where it came with the installer. I assume it was Avast as I've seen it in an update already on a different computer.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#160

Post by mft_ »

javagram wrote: post #151
cletus wrote: post #146

It's hard to believe what a behemoth Chrome has become when it was only announced in 2008. What makes this even more amazing is it did this when IE/Edge ships as standard on Windows (which seems to be ~80% marketshare) and Safari ships as standard on OSX/iOS. It wasn't until Android 4.1 (2012) that Chrome even shipped on Android. Chrome did several things really well out of the gate: - Auto update. Words can't adequa…

> - The Omnibar. To this day, FF persists with the two-box model where one is technically for URLs and the other for search. No one wants that of course so search basically works in the URL box. Why they don't just merge this is beyond me. Privacy. Google doesn't worry about privacy, of course, but firefox tries to avoid sending all the URLs you ever type to google or your alternate search suggestion provider.

Isn't that just a bit of code to fix?

if (s matches possibly valid URL pattern) then try to open it else send s to search provider

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