> I remember 10-15 years ago you would get blocked for not using IE or whatever, even though the site worked fine and there was no technical reason for the block
Reminds me of when I discovered that Google Inbox worked in Firefox, even though Google decided to only allow Chrome to access it:
I think that "ongoing" push you're talking about was/is accidental, because a lot of people use Chrome. What I'm seeing now seems to be intentional, because people disagree with the ethics/morals surrounding AI, or seeing a large impact on their servers because of resource consumption, so more philosophical and/or practical, rather than accidental.
But who knows, I won't claim to have exact insights into exactly what caused "Chrome is the new IE", could be it was very intentional and they never stopped.
I don't remember Google (search, at least) ever not working in any browser I tried, and I used some oddball browsers over the years. Maybe apps like gmail and docs, but they simply would not work in other browsers. Remember in its early years Chrome was a darling because it was supporting the "modern" web. That was the whole stated reason Google developed Chrome: to support modern, rich web applications, and force other browsers to do the same if they wanted to stay relevant. Nobody guessed that Chrome would eventually be the new IE.
Google has a very long history of downgrading or even outright blocking off their services based on User-Agent. Them doing it to Opera in particular was a big story back in those "early days". And no, it's not because it wouldn't work - people literally made it work by spoofing the UA.
Reminds me of when I discovered that Google Inbox worked in Firefox, even though Google decided to only allow Chrome to access it:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879 - "Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?" - 213 points | Nov 14, 2014 | 208 comments
(correct link to the gist is https://gist.github.com/victorb/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e today)
I think that "ongoing" push you're talking about was/is accidental, because a lot of people use Chrome. What I'm seeing now seems to be intentional, because people disagree with the ethics/morals surrounding AI, or seeing a large impact on their servers because of resource consumption, so more philosophical and/or practical, rather than accidental.
But who knows, I won't claim to have exact insights into exactly what caused "Chrome is the new IE", could be it was very intentional and they never stopped.