Microsoft now pops up a poll asking why you'd want to use another browser when you download Chrome

dantheclamman@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1012 points –
Microsoft now thirstily injects a poll when you download Google Chrome
theverge.com
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As someone once said to me. Microsoft is not something you like, but is something you have to withstand due to Enterprise use it so much, and have so many users.

But when it comes to the browser, then you have to follow the standard for HTML, and suddenly you can choose something else.

"have to follow the standard for HTML"

Websites have historically been so godawful about complying with web standards that browsers had no choice but to support grossly non-standard code. Which then became standard. Now the vast majority of the web only works because of browser implementation details. So it's Chromium and Gecko and nothing else ever again.

Microsoft is actually to blame for that. IE6 was bundled with XP and was so popular that others have been in single digit percentages. MS used this to start modifying standards and developers followed most popular browser. The ever so famous embrace, extend, extinguish tactics MS is so fond of. So JS and CSS being broken for the longest time was thanks to MS and their attempt to secure monopoly, which they succeeded for the better part of the decade.

And now that Microsoft has been driven back on that front, Google has started to use Chrome in the same way.

Indeed. Although Google has less power than what Microsoft did. Chrome's engine is after all open source and everyone can just diverge. However there are more things than just engine. All Google needs to do is require Chrome to be able to sync bookmarks or something similar and people will ditch others.