Chrome is a complicated case in general because Google poured money into promoting Chrome and had some of the most popular sites on the web promoting it heavily and actively sabotaged Firefox at several key points. I respect a lot of the Chrome team’s early work but it’s very hard for me to see that as a story about fair competition alone.

So, to summarize: defaults are powerful, but advertising is more powerful.

Specifically, Google was leveraging their existence as "THE web" to push their web browser. Every single Google property aggressively displayed banners and reminders and nag prompts ensuring you "Gmail is best in Chrome" and other nonsense that "Just one click here to fix".

Yes, putting a single button with vague words in front of users almost always gets a lot of clicks, which we've known for decades, and it turns out, if you have the attention of nearly the entire web-browsing world, you can put that button in front of people's faces way more than your competitors. It should have been considered billions of dollars of free advertising for Chrome that should have been assessed against them somehow.

It's blatantly unfair and should have been shut down in literally days, but nooooooooo we aren't allowed to have regulation here in the states.

Not just advertising: Mozilla could not have put a “better in Firefox” button on Gmail or YouTube at any price, or forced Google to follow through on their promise around H.264, etc.

> Mozilla could not have put a “better in Firefox” button on Gmail or YouTube at any price

Microsoft is literally doing this, and yet...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/microsoft-edge-will-...

Google also tried to push PC OEMs to pre-install Chrome on their new PCs when Chrome was new.[1] Sony/VAIO is the only manufacturer to have known to take the bait.[2]

[1] https://www.crn.com.au/news/google-may-pre-install-chrome-br...

[2] https://thenextweb.com/news/sony-computers-google-chrome-bro...

I vaguely remember it also getting packaged in with installers for unrelated software on Windows.

Yeah, this is the thing that gets me. Chrome is the (rare) exception when we're talking about defaults generally winning, not the rule.

An interesting thought experiment might be to imagine if Chrome was actually somehow the default browser on Windows and/or macOS. I think we could expect Edge's and/or Safari's market share numbers to be much lower than they are now if that were the case.

For factual correctness, I'll point out that Chrome is the default on (Pixel) Android and ChromeOS.

Chrome is the default on Chromebooks which has a decent marketshare.

Are you sure about that? As I said in another comment that’s not my experience. Might be wrong, I’ll double check tomorrow at work.

I am 100% positive. Which browser do you think is the default on a Chromebook?

My bad, I ready to fast and understood "google search" while you wrote "chrome".

Very strange statement to make given a large mobile phone operating system (Android) has Chrome as the default browser. Also the default in some Linux distros such as the Raspberry Pi OS. And many PC builders bundle Chrome with their usual crapware. Other posters have also pointed out Google's own Chromebooks use Chrome by default as well. Quite a significant base especially among people who don't have the money to buy into the Apple ecosystem.