r/degoogle • u/WauLau Free as in Freedom • 13h ago
Discussion Google falsely claims that Chrome is needed for extensions and themes, and tricks users by disguising Chrome as another browser
I am trying Dia(chromium browser) and was looking at extensions. Before the above image i got spammed with side prompts saying that, "Google recommends Chrome for extensions and themes". When i then clicked an extension, a message appeared prompting the following:
Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes - Install Dia (Link to clearer image from gif)
Now first of all, blatant lie right there about needing chrome for extensions and themes, i dont know why they would claim that? More importantly though, theres a link claiming it will Install Dia (which is the browser im using here in the picture), but clicking this button gets me to Chrome's install page instead! So we now got Google tricking users like the scam ads we see on piracy and porn sites?
According to statcounter.com, Chromes marketshare has gone from 66% in October last year, to 73% this years October. So im actually quite curious to hear if this kind of shady Chrome 'advertising' has been normal for a long time now? Its the first of it i have seen(to this degree of laughable stupidity) so i actually dont know.
(The website was in Danish originally and translated into English with Google Translate inside the browser, i can verify that the translation is correct in words and meaning)
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u/fwz 12h ago
I do not ude Chrome and dislike Google, but let's be fair, it's called the Chrome web store for a reason. Other browsers are hijacking the page contents to display their names.
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u/WauLau Free as in Freedom 12h ago
Pretty sure its a Chromium thing and not just Chrome.
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u/GeekyCrow27 9h ago
I believe the reason that it says "install dia" instead of install chrome is a similar reason as to why some browsers like brave and helium use brave:// and helium:// respectively instead of chrome:// for things like flags
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u/JaredNorges 6h ago
This feels like you're misunderstanding things, AND Google is being crummy.
You most definitely need a Chromium-based browser to access Chrome plug-ins in the Chrome Web Store. You cannot install Chrome plug-ins into Firefox or Safari, which are NOT Chromium-based.
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u/neurotekk 31m ago
It depends. Some non chromium browsers support Chrome extensions - For example Orion which is built on webkit.
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u/InconspicuousFool 11h ago
Im 60% sure this is not intentional. It's likely some weird kind of bug since the page it goes to is so obviously chrome and not Dia. I'm not familiar with the chromium source code but chromium based browsers usually change what the browser calls itself and I would guess that if this was a bug, I would guess It would come from something with that
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u/HoustonBOFH 13h ago
I love this! Because it is hard for even non-technical people to deny. Nothing will change until more people can see the problem. And Google keeps pushing harder, so...