Plus email-SPAM(!!!) about installing Chrome when you signed in to your Google-account on a new computer using a non-Chrome browser.
It also used dubious wording: “You need to upgrade your browser. Click here”
And paying to have it bundled as a drive-by installation with other software.
And Chrome-only websites. And the list just goes on and on.
It was spyware tactics + SPAM all over the place. And the sheer amount of it was mind-blowing.
Even technical people who explicitly didn’t want Chrome had a hard time avoiding it. Imagine the effect on regular, non-technical users.
Saying it was all down to technical merit is just appoligist and delusional.
With Chrome’s dominance and semi-monoculture undeniably in place, Google is now using that position to force new things, like subverting open web-standards with DRM.
I can’t believe people are so non-chalantly allowing this to happen.
Firefox has rapidly improved since it's inception and was rapidly stealing IE market share prior to Chrome.
Had Chrome not been rammed down people's throats then we might have a more even landscape than we do today.