I believe the claim was that it's coming default on prebuilt PCs. If you're installing Windows, that's not the situation where Chrome would be the default.

I do a lot of IT support. Edge is the default on every single prebuilt / laptop I have setup for people.

This is ancedotal sure but it's several hundred datapoints from the cheapest student focused budget laptops(running windows not chrome os) to business grade laptops from the big 3 (HP/Dell/Lenovo). Apple ships Safari by default and every linux distro I have used ships firefox or a spinoff of firefox by default.

So in my experience Chrome is actively installed by the local it help (me, things are just plain broken for some use cases on non-chrome). I personally do not use Chrome, that doesn't mean I won't make it the default for every PC I touch for an enduser purely because I get less calls for support when users are using chrome.

It's no secret that I feel like other search engines are worse that Google even though Google's results are nearly unusable.

Google built a mote by having a better product, nobody else tried to compete and now it's become nearly impossible to compete. I actively avoid Chromium based browsers personally but even then I need to have one installed because even in Firefox and Safari derived browsers things are broken or website just plain don't work (https//f1.tv actively does not work on firefox as an example, unless they have since backtracked)

>> I feel like other search engines are worse that Google even though Google's results are nearly unusable.

Give Kagi a go - the usability thing is superb, as you can down rank common awful sites so they never appear in the results and they aren't stuffing ads into the results either

I find the results excellent 99% of the time and for those odd cases I'm not convinced it found the best results I pop back to Google. I tend to find that I do that most with subtle image searches (which are kind of rare but you are usually after something very specific where Kagi occasionally struggles with on the image side)

For me almost all conventional search is dead now. Sure, perhaps useful for “what going on tomorrow where I live” but for everything else I now rely on LLMs.

I wasn't sure where to say it but your comment seems appropriate. It must impact install numbers when companies(ones I've been at) only want you to use chrome. Wasn't really an option for our regular staff. I was able to get away with using ff.

Agree as well - I still end up mostly using Google search, tho half the time when I don't get any decent results I realize it wasn't that important anyways. Interesting side effect of poor search results.

Edge moved from their own engine to Chromium’s Blink engine, so from an IT support perspective, it should work equally well.

I bought 2 machines in the past year and neither of them had Chrome installed. Maybe it happens, but not on the two brands I got.

>I believe the claim was that it's coming default on prebuilt PCs.

That's the claim, but I've never seen a pre-built with chrome installed (other than a chromebook obviously), let alone configured as the default. Which OEMs are pre-installing it as the default?

Right but what OS is installed on a pre-built PC if not Windows?

not sure what exactly that has to do with prebuilt versions of Windows that come with bloatware/adware or other nonstandard customisations?

I think the GP has only encountered business laptops (which don't have as much bloatware). I can confirm that current "normie" laptops (from HP at least) do already have Chrome installed, although it is unclear if this is as part of paid marketing or just to reduce support headaches.

Also, there was the time where Google pays antivirus companies like then-Avast to shove Chrome. Unsure if it is still happens, but this points out to how Chrome can pay through the marketshare.

> extremely popular

for really small amounts of "extremely"

(outside US K-12 they are hardly a thing)

I have a very nice Chromebook tablet (a Lenovo Duet). I use it to run a Debian Linux VM; it has its quirks, but I use it to run Emacs, TeX, and various Scheme implementations. It is relatively cheap, and even though it's a relatively low-powered device, it has adequate performance for my needs. (And yes, it is not “really” Linux: you can't install your own window manager, for example. But it's usable.)

I have lots of criticisms of Chrome OS, but the fact is that the year of Linux on the Desktop has arrived. You buy one of these machines, and out of the box you can have Linux apps (and a terminal) running within 15 minutes of switching the machine on.

Yea, I don't disagree it is a decent product. I was just refuting the "extremely popular" comment. Statistically their market share is minimal. People still by-and-large buy Microsoft Windows laptops.

I wouldn't be surprised if Chromebooks alone gave Chrome more market share than Firefox.

They don't do so badly in the UK with non-technical types (eg the elderly) especially where a full computer isn't safe or supportable.

crucial though, that's were audiences get introduced with their software

And Australian K-12 too :)

German here. I know 0 people who own a Chromebook. In fact I think I have never seen one in my entire life (outside of a store).

Schools I know are using Windows laptops or iPads.