I'd hardly call it "a defense of the open web", Apple has hamstrung Safari for years to keep the App Store on iOS competitive with the exploding capabilities of every other modern browser. Chromium is popular because people like it.
This is exactly the narrative that Google's marketing folks have screamed to the heavens and any shill outlet that will publish it, yes. :)
Chrome is not popular because people like it. Chrome is popular because Google forces over 80% of phones on the planet to ship with it as default, and because people trying to install Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player would suddenly discover their default browser was now Google Chrome. And then, once they had a decent install base... a lot of other people installed Chrome because some poorly written website that didn't follow web standards told them it'd only work well if they installed Chrome. Like Gmail, the world's most popular email client.
Microsoft also was forced by the EU to offer a browser choice in a fresh install of Windows. At least in Europe this probably offered a lot of visibility to alternative web browsers.
Also IE felt years behind the competition and the situation isn't even remotely comparable to Safari. It seems like the Safari team made some efforts to catch up. While they aren't at the same point as Firefox or Chromium they did catch up a little bit over the last year.
The situation with IE was completely different. Microsoft used IE to push proprietary standards like ActiveX and it felt like there wasn't really a active development team for Internet Explorer or that Microsoft IE wasn't a priority. The first thing isn't true for Safari and while it feels like Safari wasn't a priority for Apple they announced making more of an effort if I remember correctly and if they don't Safari will probably go down the same road as IE.
Doesn't matter, Safari and IE were defaults, no advertising needed. Chrome wouldn't have prevailed if those browsers were even close to as good at the time.
I don’t disagree that these phones, installers, and design prompts contribute to significant market share.
It doesn’t change my opinion that Chrome has the best performance, developer experience, and latest API features. It’s the only browser trying to give web apps access to the expensive hardware I paid for.
I know it’s a hot take to like that, but unfortunately tons of my desktop software must be connected to the internet anyways to make sure I’ve paid a subscription bolted on a few versions ago :( I prefer the sandbox and portability of a web app when that’s my alternative.
So if the only reason people use Chrome is that it comes pre-installed on Android, it shouldn't matter if it's allowed on iOS right? Most people would keep using the pre-installed Safari right?
