Exactly, we saw this with MS's IE 2—3 decades ago. That governments didn't learn from this and let it repeat with Chrome is so damn annoying.
Two decades ago IE6 was already 3yo, Safari 1 was 1yo, and it would take 4 years for Chrome to drop[2].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
When you use decades, it is implied that the precision is rough, interpreting it as exactly 30 years ago is just bad faith.
OP is correct - in the timespan between 2 and 3 decades ago, MS / IE implemented its full range of anti-competitive practices and at least partially through them became even more dominant than Chrome is today.
I thought that one had been retroactively deemed a pretty silly decision
No points for guessing why as it's damn obvious.
Same people = same mistakes.
And that is exactly why Chrome should be broken up/out. It is unfair competition. And you say there are many other well working options out there but that is simply not true. Googles web applications work best on Chrome and often break on non Chrome browsers. Mostly because of changes to those web applications and not because of random browser bugs. This is how you win people over and complete your browser world domination.