Your comment reads strangely and I can't tell what you're trying to say. I'm not sure why you frame these things as being at odds ("That said... But...). They were willing to pay to bundle Chrome with installers - it's not surprising they also invested in "conventional" marketing. And it directly led to the browser-almost-monopoly you cite.
They spent a ton of money on promoting Chrome
But essentially defending them on that specific issue doesn't make it a nice, or admirable company in my book.
Edit, to clarify some more: I was "defending" them on some accusations that they promoted Chrome with dirty tricks and dark patterns. Initially, I'd wager, they didn't.
Ah, I see. You were saying that because they marketed Chrome "legitimately", they probably didn't market Chrome with dirty tricks and dark patterns "at first", am I right? But I don't really think that's how it went - I think they used every trick in the book, as early and as often as possible.
If that's not true, and some marketroid in Google woke up one day and thought "hey, we could get a lot more bang for our buck by being super scummy!", then that would be an interesting tale. But it seems more likely that what happened was that Google just pulled out all the stops.
At any rate it's not much of a defense. Their "legitimate" marketing in no way absolves them for their "illegitimate" marketing.
At any rate it's not much of a defense. Their "legitimate" marketing in no way absolves them for their "illegitimate" marketing.
I think we are in general agreement here.
Spending a lot of money on legitimate marketing certainly doesn't absolve scammy tacticts at all.
One of my more recent pet peevees is their fiddling with GMail in a way that a lot of mails from external sources are flagged as spam. Even though they're sure as shit and very obviously not. And not only that. They're constantly moving the goal posts on what is "legitimate" mail.
Having such a big slice of global email this is super scummy and I really hope that (probably European, if any) regulators crack down hard on them yet again.
