I don't see any problem with doing a few partnerships like these. Even with some major companies. Firefox could easily do the same.

It's only a problem when you squeeze out competition by doing exclusive contracts with all major distributors in a particular distribution channel.

I'd say that sneaking an install of your product onto people's computers when they are not expecting it is exploiting a dark pattern.

However, the point was that Chrome didn't mysteriously gain market share solely based on some sort of technical superiority.

Google paid to gain market share with the sorts of clueless users who click next during install wizards without reading anything.

My point was Google didn't pay anything to gain the market share because they advertise Chrome on their frontpage, something neither Firefox, nor IE, nor Opera nor Safari, nor anyone else in that matter could do.

From an antitrust law point of view, using your monopoly status in one area as a weapon against the competition in other areas is something that likely gets you in trouble.

Although, it helps to remember that in the EU, you don't need nearly as big a market share before their competition law kicks in and places restrictions on your behavior, so things that you can still get away with in the US can be quite illegal in the EU.

They paid to have it bundled as a drive-by install in other popular software, spyware-style.

But only you can leverage your monopoly on search to know exactly which products are worth having those contracts with.

If Mozilla is honest to its premise it can not do such a thing.

Mozilla probably doesn't have so much money to pay for installing their browser.