People forget that Sundar Pichai's entire claim to success at Google was injecting the Google Toolbar into the Adobe Reader installer which would hijack your search and browsing data on IE, and the launch of Chrome, which was then also injected into the Adobe Reader installer, occurred because Google was concerned IE might block or limit their toolbar.

People absolutely did like Google at the time, but the majority of its growth is actually shoveling hijackers into other software installs just like BonzaiBuddy.

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lotsofpulp 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I recommended everyone to use Chrome simply because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to provide built in PDF viewing and creation.

There was a good, long period where Microsoft just decided to let the market run amok with malware for critical software, instead of providing something like Preview on macOS. As a result, the safest option for most lay people was to use Chrome, where they could quickly and easily view, and most important, save pdfs of websites, receipts, etc.

Then, once MacBook Airs were solidified + iPhone, I started recommending people use macOS simply because Preview could edit PDFs and easily allow signing them.

I haven't used Windows in a very long time, so I assume it's still the same situation.

	▲	traderj0e 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah I remember when Windows lacked every basic utility that Mac OS had. The most common malware was PDF readers, because a very common search was "how to open pdf." Same with zip.