My experience with malware would strongly disagree. Heck, even non-malicious programs have been known to stick around after uninstall (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/358651/unable-to-c...).
- OS issue, not being enable to remove applications (or an exploit)
- a chrome one(!), actually chrome installs it on demand as it remembers doing it earlier - likely an url protocol handler.
There are worse things with poor solutions including being able to survive OS reinstall... The infamous Minix - "Are you scared yet"[0][1]
[0]: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/11/07/1041236/minix-intel... [1]: https://itsfoss.com/fact-intel-minix-case/
As far as the zoom issue, that's just one specific instance that came to mind. Yes, with a proper package manager (like aptitude) that's managing all the files, you are much less likely to have these kinds of things, so yay linux. On the flip side, most consumer OS's (windows/mac) don't go in for that kind of package management, usually relying on the app to be in a single place or have a packaged "uninstall".
As far as the specifics of the zoom problem, it's definitely not a chrome issue, as it's a standalone web server running locally, not a url protocol handler. And it's not quite an OS issue, other than that the OS allowed it.
That's a great point! Browsers could perhaps start to include metrics like these for website permissions. For example, when the Web Browser prompts for USB access, show metrics like how many people have granted permission to Bluetooth for this website, perhaps even room for comments and ratings. Chrome is afterall trying to be your next app store.
Going to the app-store allows for reading opinions (i.e. somewhat independent) compared to just clicking, go-on. It shows some download/usage statistics and the like.
Also removal of the app guarantees removal, removal of web-works, etc. is significantly more cumbersome. Personally, I have very little trust in browsers (with their constant updates, sort of rushed) and have set deletion of all cookies/storage/etc. on exit - hence convenience is not there.
Overall web browsers make for a poor man OS w/o any specific hardware support (unless you count virtualization to a degree) for privileged layer access.