There's also the fact that websites themselves need to be mindful of multiple browser engines existing because of Safari. Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.
Google also plays "fire and motion" with Web standards. They have a tendency to use non-standard(-yet) features on their websites. This gives them a perfect excuse to make other browsers look technically inferior (when the features are missing or the browser is blocked) or slow (when the features are implemented using inefficient polyfills). The unfairness is the one-sided choice of using whatever cutting-edge or Google-specific feature Chrome has, while they'd never do this in other direction. If Firefox implemented a new feature first, Google would never tell Chrome users that Chrome sucks and they need to upgrade to Firefox.
This is the thing that is most concerning. We’ve seen this happen before. We ended up with an Internet Explorer monoculture that paralysed front-end development for over a decade. Huge numbers of developers were happily writing Internet Explorer-only websites and didn’t care about any other browser at all. There’s a real danger that this ends the open web and turns it into a Chrome platform controlled by Google.
Firefox used to have a 25-30% share before Mozilla shat the bed by neglecting it while treating Firefox like a money-piñata to fund a series of dead-end, copy-cat projects in their big-tech cosplay era.
Blaming Chrome for Firefox and Safari being shit (as reflected by the percentage of users who voluntarily use the respective browsers) removes their culpability. Chrome had to grow their share from 0%.
One of three major factors involved actually being good, and I'd bet the other two factors overwhelm that one.
> One of three major factors involved actually being good, and I'd bet the other two factors overwhelm that one
Counterpoint: Microsoft Edge on Windows has the same 2 factors going for it, but failing to replicate Chrome's ascendancy. Edge and Windows pleading with you to not install Chrome is kinda sad.