A web browser allows access to all websites (broad reach). HN is just one website on the web (narrow reach). Pretty clear to me why this is a bad comparison, just interested to know why the OP thought otherwise.
I don't see what reach has to do with making HN "free" and Chrome "not free" if they both use space in their interfaces to deliver advertisements. Arguably, Chrome would be more "free" since HN displays its advertisements more prominently than Chrome's and they masquerade as user-generated content. Is there more to your metric?
