this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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They should update the Chrome extension to tell people to download Firefox instead
Imagine if Google's decision to do this to fight adblockers results in them losing the lead in the browser war because everyone switches to other browsers.
Dreaming is one thing, but I remain skeptical. Tech people always seem to vastly overestimate how much the average population will react to tech news. Most people don't care. They should but they don't. In addition to that, use of Chrome by businesses is heavily entrenched. The IT guys probably hate it on a personal level, but it takes a lot to make business bigwigs change direction away from a "trustworthy" big company like Google.
I mostly agree, but lets remember
So was internet explorer
Chrome was backed by Google, a multifaceted staple of the Internet ecosystem and rolled out with a ton of marketing behind it.
I remain skeptical that Firefox could plausibly overtake Chrome. The mere word of mouth of tech enthusiasts simply isn't enough to make a population majority proactively switch.
And we had it like forever.
"like" being a very important word in that sentence.
The thing that finally got businesses to finally get off IE wasn't from the browser being worse than every other option. Heck, it wasn't even because it was a decrepit piece of software that lost it's former market dominance (and if anything businesses see that as a positive, not a negative).
What finally did that was microsoft saying there won't be any security updates. That's what finally got them off their ass; subtly threatening them with data breaches, exploits, etc. if they continue to use it. I don't see google doing this anytime soon, at least not without a "sequel" like microsoft had with edge.
The vast majority of people aren't even going to know or care. A lot of people will probably just continue on even when their adblocker becomes less effective. Of course the type of people who use adblockers are also more likely to wonder why their adblocker suddenly became less effective and then switch to a browser where it's more effective.
It takes a lot to change the inertia that already exists. People have been predicting the rise of the Linux desktop for at least a decade now and it still hasn't really caught on.
Tech people are niche but over time we will pre-install what we consider "good" on our grandmas, dads, moms, friends, etc... PCs
The older generation demographic continues to shrink, while it seems the great majority of Gen Z and A are perfectly happy to use whatever ecosystem is built into their device. I'm not saying that people shouldn't want better software, merely being realistic about the choices of populations.