there's no denying that Google literally spammed Chrome everywhere, and often with misleading or dishonest text.
"Your browser is outdated. Upgrade it now (to Chrome) for a better experience", "Make youtube faster with Chrome" etc etc.
It was literally impossible to go anywhere on the web, without the top of every second screen you visited saying "Upgrade to Chrome". It was massive and it was dishonest.
Ofcourse moms and dads everywhere jumped on this, like they jump on the "free scans" and "you have a virus" messages without ever considering if Chrome was a different browser or there being any technical merit to the claims about being better. Google used the exact same strategy as malware authors.
They even bundled it as a drive-by install with other popular software (like Flash). Update flash and suddenly your default browser is Chrome, which conveniently imported all your Firefox data and now reports all of that to Google, one keystroke at a time.
It's hard not to call this spyware.
Plain and simple: Chrome's marketshare is based on being evil and nothing else.
These days Chrome may feel like a better product, because Google keeps making their pages for Chrome and nothing else, using proprietary Google only extensions.
And that reminds me of a story I've heard before... Something about there E's..?
s:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10631614