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> Chrome really took the ball and ran with it I'm still kind of bitter with the way they did that. A lot of windows installers, which usually installed you too
by kpcyrd 10y ago
> Chrome really took the ball and ran with it
I'm still kind of bitter with the way they did that. A lot of windows installers, which usually installed you toolbars if you forgot to uncheck a box, started installing chrome as your default browser if you forgot to uncheck a box.
I've seen a lot of non-technical people using chrome who have no idea what chrome is or remembering giving consent to installing chrome.
- mmastrac 10y agoInteresting. I didn't see that - I assumed it was just a result of advertising it to everyone who searched on Google. Do you have any specific examples?
- vlan0 10y agoAdobe is guilty of this. If you download Flash Player from their site, the "Optional offers" are to also install Chrome and Google Toolbar. Both of which are checked by default.
- zobzu 10y agoyou're thinking google did not pay adobe for this, adobe is doing this just cuz they like it? are you mad
- JohnTHaller 10y agoAdobe Flash - When you download and installed Flash for Opera or Firefox, it would trick you into installing Chrome as your default browser unless you noticed and unchecked a box: http://i.imgur.com/Uldw6X3.png http://i.imgur.com/Uldw6X3.png Java - When updating, Java on Windows would often trick you into installing Chrome as your default browser unless you noticed and unchecked a box Avast, AntiVir, etc - Nearly every free antivirus on Windows was paid by Google to install Chrome. The free antivirus would notify you there was a new version and if you clicked the UPDATE or CONTINUE button without noticing and unchecking the box, you'd wind up with Chrome installed and set as your default browser: http://i.imgur.com/hNZLbmL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hNZLbmL.jpg The majority of the non-techies I know and had set up with Firefox have no idea how Chrome got on their machines and became their default browser. I'd wager a lot of Chrome's desktop userbase on Windows is due to shady bundleware arrangements. Chrome was still engaged in the above behavior the last time I checked.
- k__ 10y agoGrowth hacking at large. Impressive :)
- MOARDONGZPLZ 10y agoNo, it's not impressive. It's deceptive and a dark pattern.
- Aldo_MX 10y agoGoogle's not at fault; Adobe, Oracle, and every other greedy software vendor are.
- JohnTHaller 10y agoGoogle is knowingly paying for it.
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
- mordocai 10y agoccleaner and possibly the other piriform products do this
- tunap 10y agoCorrect: all Piriform products do this... unless chrome is already installed/detected.
- neerdowell 10y agoCCleaner: https://i.imgur.com/LNFjqzd.png https://i.imgur.com/LNFjqzd.png The checkbox is pre-selected.
- nacs 10y agoThe irony in CCleaner, a tool to help you get crap off your computer, doing auto-install offers.. For those looking for an alternative, try Bleachbit [1] (works great on Linux/Windows, open-source). [1]: https://www.bleachbit.org/ https://www.bleachbit.org/
- nathancahill 10y agoAgreed. Similar to how Adobe Reader leveraged itself into computers everywhere with their Get Adobe Reader button beside every .pdf link.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoChrome also had the advantage of being advertised on Google.com.
- tdkl 10y agoIt also had an advantage of being a friggin' fast browser. I switched in 2009 and never looked back beside occasionally trying out FF and nope'ing back to Chrome.
- shmerl 10y agoFirefox became faster than Chrome quite a while ago already. Not sure what you were measuring.
- Aldo_MX 10y agoUI Responsiveness probably, any perception of speed is lost if loading a website freezes the entire browser for several msecs.
- Drdrdrq 10y agoThis. I love FF and use it wherever I can, but there are small tricks in Chrome that make it seem much faster in normal use. No matter what you do, action feedback is instant. Firefox should really imitate this.
- delecti 10y agoYep. A bit part of the perception of speed isn't "always be fast", it's "never be slow".
- acdha 10y agoWhen talking about a piece of software as complicated as a modern browser, “became faster” is too broad to have any meaning at all — you can find specific features where almost any browser is faster. In the case of Chrome and Firefox, they're competitive enough that you really need to say both what you're measuring and how you measured it. People tend to say one is faster than the other when they most commonly mean “the set of extensions I installed in A slowed it down more than B”.
- Rudism 10y agoGoogle was paying out $1 per Chrome install for a long time, which is why you saw it being heavily distributed through all sorts of shady channels like monetized installers. For context, a payout of $0.10 for a bundled install would have been considered really good back then; a payout 10x that amount meant you'd pull every dirty trick in the book to get as many installs as possible.
- tarblog 10y agoDo you have a source on this? Even one about the market in general? I wasn't aware of this practice before now.
- yuhong 10y agoI wonder what web designers who dealt with IE thought of that.
- toomanythings2 10y agoI don't remember any such thing and I started using Chrome from day one.
- bigger_cheese 10y agoI prefer to use Firefox. I ended up switching because Netflix refused to work in Linux unless I used Chrome. At that point there was no point having two browsers installed so was path of least resistance just to use chrome for everything.