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Chrome is not "the web."



To a ton of people (including developers), it is. Therefore anything that’s not Chrome or 100% compatible is “breaking the web”.

No one is forcing a Chrome hegemony on us. Developers are choosing it.


This is something that lots of people complain about but somehow I never experience. Not to doubt it—I’ve seen the complaint enough that I believe it—mostly I’m just confused as to how I’ve managed to dodge the problem.

Firefox and mobile Safari, so I guess I should experience it…


Hmm, many google web features not-so-subtly nudge you to install Chrome. Some outright block usage of anything other than Chrome. This has been going on for well more than a decade.

I regularly see small/medium websites which state they only work with Chrome, but I feel they do so at their peril.

I see some of those sites push people to install a "desktop app" if you do not use Chrome, which is of course an Electron-based app.

I also regularly see services that just fail for long runs of time on non-Chrome browsers due to complete lack of regression testing, or (slightly more generously) because they aren't testing their services against current releases of Firefox/Safari. Safari is more sensitive to this, both because of a much more active development tick compared to Firefox, and because it is leveraging system frameworks rather than a relatively static compatibility layer 'buffer'.


Those developers will always, ALWAYS cater it iOS - where the money is.


... and they'll do this by having their mobile team create an app, and making their website refuse to work on iOS by user-agent string.




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