Your reasoning does not make it harmless, it makes Microsoft the same as Google and Apple.

People defend the walled garden of Apple.

But I think it's just post purchase rationalization.

People enter the walled garden expecting a walled garden and desiring a walled garden.

Microsoft’s behavior is like taking a stroll in a forest or open field and suddenly having walls erected around you and cameras pointed at you.

harmful is google purposefully blocking their properties to mobile edge when everything worked with changed U/A string.

Concerning at best, since they're using first party grounds for advertising but that does not make it harmful.

I am an occasional user of Maps, YouTube, Blogger and Translate. Never used Chrome, and all of these properties work just fine and have not tried to push Chrome.

I'm also using a stock Android and have never used Chrome on it. Play Store, Play Games, Find my Device, and the Google app work just fine and haven't tried to push Chrome either.

I guess I should prepend these observations with "Yet", as I'm not at all of the opinion that it'll never happen.

Or you've grown immune to it, because I work on Windows and occasionally setup new VM builds to test things and I always get these banners.

What's even worse is that their CAPTCHA stuff prefers chrome/chromium users off the bat with reliability scores.

> all of these properties work just fine and have not tried to push Chrome.

Historically Google has relentlessly advertised Chrome to Firefox users on Youtube and their main search page ... probably the most valuable advertising space on the Internet. Maybe they've cut back, for some or all users.

Have you tried using Translate for a web page recently, instead of just a couple sentences of text? Some time ago, they removed that functionality, instead instructing users to use a browser with native translation capabilities to translate pages. It's a pretty blatant push to get people over onto Chrome.

No they didn't. Paste a URL and hit the icon next to it.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&tab=TT&sl=auto&...

Hm. It may have been as part of something temporary, but I definitely ran into that message recently. Good to see it's back.

Google doesn't bother me if I set Firefox for Android as the default browser.

It does on my S8, try any google website and you'll get notifications and I've even gotten emails every time I sign in on a device with a gmail ID but don't have the google apps on that device.

What's the problem? I use Firefox and Firefox Focus as my only web browsers on my Android phone.