> Google had the advantage of plastering Chrome all over google.com when people performed searches. That's how it got installed everywhere.
That, and aggressive bundleware campaign in early-mid 2010s.
Google paid above market rates for authors of popular Windows freeware like CCleaner, Adobe Flash etc. [0]. They even tried to bribe VLC at some point [1].
I'm always baffled to see commenters in HN were aware of Google Search banners but not this bundleware business. I guess it's due to people here having disproportionately high use of macOS and Linux compared to rest of the world.
That, and aggressive bundleware campaign in early-mid 2010s.
Google paid above market rates for authors of popular Windows freeware like CCleaner, Adobe Flash etc. [0]. They even tried to bribe VLC at some point [1].
I'm always baffled to see commenters in HN were aware of Google Search banners but not this bundleware business. I guess it's due to people here having disproportionately high use of macOS and Linux compared to rest of the world.
[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280808