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Opinion: Chrome is Turning Into the New Internet Explorer 6 (theverge.com)
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Chrome now has the type of dominance that Internet Explorer once did, and we're starting to see Google's own apps diverge from supporting web standards much in the same way Microsoft did a decade and a half ago. Whether you blame Google or the often slow moving World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the results have been particularly evident throughout 2017. Google has been at the center of a lot of "works best with Chrome" messages we're starting to see appear on the web. Google Meet, Allo, YouTube TV, Google Earth, and YouTube Studio Beta all block Windows 10's default browser, Microsoft Edge, from accessing them and they all point users to download Chrome instead. Some also block Firefox with messages to download Chrome. Hangouts, Inbox, and AdWords 3 were all in the same boat when they first debuted.
It's led to one developer at Microsoft to describe Google's behavior as a strategic pattern. "When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer in a now-deleted tweet. Google also controls the most popular site in the world, and it regularly uses it to push Chrome. If you visit Google.com in a non-Chrome browser you're prompted up to three times if you'd like to download Chrome. Google has also even extended that prompt to take over the entire page at times to really push Chrome in certain regions. Microsoft has been using similar tactics to convince Windows 10 users to stick with Edge. The troubling part for anyone who's invested in an open web is that Google is starting to ignore a principle it championed by making its own services Chrome-only -- even if it's only initially.
It's led to one developer at Microsoft to describe Google's behavior as a strategic pattern. "When the largest web company in the world blocks out competitors, it smells less like an accident and more like strategy," said a Microsoft developer in a now-deleted tweet. Google also controls the most popular site in the world, and it regularly uses it to push Chrome. If you visit Google.com in a non-Chrome browser you're prompted up to three times if you'd like to download Chrome. Google has also even extended that prompt to take over the entire page at times to really push Chrome in certain regions. Microsoft has been using similar tactics to convince Windows 10 users to stick with Edge. The troubling part for anyone who's invested in an open web is that Google is starting to ignore a principle it championed by making its own services Chrome-only -- even if it's only initially.
We recently had a product forced on us by our state government that they had written by and outside contractor. Everything works fine in Firefox with a user agent switcher, but otherwise you are blocked with the message "Google Chrome is the only supported browser..." I get the feeling it's people who can't be bothered to test their code in anything other than Chrome.
Some also block Firefox with messages to download Chrome.
Not if you're on Linux. They seem to only bully MS users. They know GNU/Linux users know better.
My experience differs from yours on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Firefox 57.0.3 (64-bit), visiting https://www.google.com/earth/
But when it comes to JavaScript then it's a headache of its own, primarily on Microsoft browsers where those browsers have a tendency to do things differently.
But a site that depends on JavaScript is in general a pretty crappy site.
That's pretty old-fashioned thinking. Today Edge is fast and holds to standards pretty well, while all of the most used and useful sites use a lot of Javascript. I wouldn't call any map site a "pretty crappy site" just because you have to have Javascript turned on to pan and zoom the map. That's the core functionality of the thing, trying to do some crappy workaround with arrows on each edge of the map where you click an arrow and the entire page refreshes with the map moved that direction is a stupid way to avoid Javascript.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Yeah, there are similarities but it is actually completely different, both in philosophy and magnitude.
First, besides a few bleeding edge web apps (pun not intended), the vast majority of websites work on any recent browser. The situation is much better in that regard than it was before. In fact most headaches come more from compatibility between different versions within the same family rather than between the latest version of different families.
And unlike Microsoft in the IE6 days, Google actually wants other browsers to be compatible. Google doesn't make money off Chrome, they make money when you use their online services, they are perfectly happy to have Firefox users too, they even pay good money to Mozilla for it.
Microsoft was in the opposite situation: they make money by selling you the browser (as a component of Windows), they broke compatibility deliberately so that you needed to pay for Windows/IE in order to access a significant part of the web.
The reason Google makes Chrome is to push standards. When they want to add a feature that is advantageous to them (ex: lowers their bandwidth requirements) they don't have to beg standards governing bodies and other browsers developers. They just implement it in Chrome and encourage others to do the same.