As Google has come to dominate the browser market, they've slowly made Chrome more and more integrated and reliant their own propriety services. They've done away with the concept of a homepage and exclusively control what the new tab page looks like. There's no way for users to set a competitor's site as the new tab page.
Each have their own definitions and ethic (or maybe aesthetic is a better description). Google have a strong advantage in discovery. They have more influence on "discovery" of everything from podcasts, books, applications, journalists, and everything else than any other company. They certainly use that weight. They can get users to any of their products. But, it is true that these products are not usually very lock-in. Search is very easy to switch from. Gmail is pretty easy. Network effect products like Wave, talk, circles, hangouts are actually the products Google has had trouble getting traction with. They got users, but not the lead in their markets.
MS have "weight" with OEMs and decision makers at companies from one man shows to fortune 500. They use that, which creates a nasty distance between liking the software you personally use and the decision to keep using it. Even Berkshire Hathaway's website is made with frontpage.
Apple have an interesting version of this. It may be their achilles heel, but it's also made them bold and creative. Apple products sell to the public, not to businesses and not through businesses. They don't rely on deals with OEMs, retailers, distributors, corporate buyers or telcoms to make sales. They don't even rely on discounts and competitive pricing. They definitely don't chase price/feature niches. More than any other company they rely on sheer consumer demand for their products. That means they would find it very hard to survive a "Windows Vista" period of ambivalence about their products. The trait is probably a long term liability. But, it is a version of level paying field, win by winning approach that produces bold product decisions.
All three are "cheats" by some standards, including (probably) the standards of the other two.
> There's no way for users to set a competitor's site as the new tab page.
I just tried setting my default search provider to Bing under settings, and it shows up on the new tab page just as Google does. I'm one version behind latest stable, on OS X... does this not work in your version of Chrome?
It seems the other three search engines in the dropdown don't do this, though, but my reading of the link is that they all have the option to provide Google with some UI.
> They've done away with the concept of a homepage and exclusively control what the new tab page looks like. There's no way for users to set a competitor's site as the new tab page
Huh? This isn't true at all. There are a ton of new tab page extensions and all the functionality you'd want that's in the default one (like most visited sites) is available through the extension APIs.
Google throws its weight around just as much as Microsoft ever did, they just smile while they do it.
I think it's less a matter of attitude and more a matter of being really, really good at doing it either unobtrusively or at least in a way that people won't mind or won't understand.
With so many years of experience with how users interact with information, they have the potential for unprecedented insight into the realities of UI interaction.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, and I agree that Google isn't doing us as users any favors in this regard (any more than Microsoft ever did or does), but there's more behind the fact that they're getting away with it among less user outrage than simply public image.
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2918032?hl=en
> "If your default search provider isn't Google you may see a different layout on the New Tab page."
They advertise their own products on search results, pushing organic results down even further.
They pulled a bait and switch with Android, turning it into GoogleOS.
Google throws its weight around just as much as Microsoft ever did, they just smile while they do it.