> If Google can do this, why not Mozilla?

I think you are having a very selective memory. Since day one, Google put Chrome ads everywhere including on the Google home page when you are visiting from Firefox and there is no way to permanently disable them.

If you are aware of a similiar marketing outreach that Mozilla could do I'm sure they would love to hear about it!

What Google did - and does - should land them in some seriously hot anti-trust water. But they'll get away with it, just as Microsoft got away with it. "This is not the monopoly you are looking for...".

I still don't get the concept of antitrust suits with browsers. Unless the system literally prevents you from installing a competing browser, you can always just go and download the competing browser and use it. Theres nothing stopping you from doing that, where's the monopoly power here?

Microsoft bundling Windows with IE, and Google using their search dominance to promote Chrome. That’s anti-competitive behavior right there, abusing your monopoly in one area to extend it to another.

> Unless the system literally prevents you from installing a competing browser, you can always just go and download the competing browser and use it.

Not if the company providing the competing browser goes out of business and stops offering it.

That's really what antitrust regulation is for: to prevent one dominant company from killing all their competitors. Once that happens, the dominant company has no more pressure to succeed and their product stagnates, harming everyone.

Browsers are actually a great example of this; despite the government prosecution, Microsoft succeeded in killing off Netscape and then had the entire browser market to themselves. The result was IE6 and "made for Internet Explorer", a horrible mess that took years to clean up.

The idea is that to use soft power you got from x to push product y is not great for the users as y should compete on its own in a meritocracy.

But it’s not really how the world works though as bigger companies use this soft power for everything, which is why I have stocks in FANG and it just keeps going up and up.

It’s a bit like Atlassian, no one is happy with Jira by itself but they do have the whole package.

They didn’t start the ads on day one. Their first big push was the TV ad:

https://slate.com/technology/2009/05/google-s-first-ever-tv-...

The “try Chrome” ads for other browsers didn’t start for a while later after that IIRC.

Firefox was big because the alternative was dysfunctional.

Mozilla cannot really competitively compete with Chrome on features, not for long. Anything new they put out that can pull in a meaningful usershare increase will be replicated by Google. And all the niche features they want to push (privacy et al) aren't going to cause major market swings.

Firefox circa 2004 was dominating because IE was a steaming pile of garbage and Apple had no market share at the time. If you wanted a usable browser it was your only option and even then they were still a minority to the installed by default broken trash.