The part in the flow where you select between allowing app installs for 7 days or forever is a glimpse into the future. That toggle shows the thought process that's going on at Google.

I can bet that a few versions down the line, the "Not recommended" option of allowing installs indefinitely will become so not recommended that they'll remove it outright. Then shrink the 7 day window to 3 days or less. Or only give users one allowed attempt at installing an app, after which it's another 24 hour waiting period for you. Then ask the user to verify themselves as a developer if they want to install whatever they want. Whatever helps them turn people away from alternatives and shrink the odds of someone dislodging their monopoly, they will do. Anything to drive people to Google Play only.

An actual example of this lives in the Gmail iOS app. Click a link in an email and every x days, a sheet appears: https://imgur.com/a/nlGS4Yk

1. Chrome

2. Google

3. Default browser app (w/unfamiliar generic logo)

They removed the option for Safari some time in the last two years; here's how it looked in 2024: https://imgur.com/1iBVFfc

And the cherry on top of dark UX patterns: an unchecked toggle rests at the bottom. "Ask me which app to use every time." You cannot stop getting these.

I hate this pop-up so much. I don’t even have Chrome installed on my phone. How about open up on the only browser I have installed…

This kind of thing should be illegal. The default browser is the default for a reason, to avoid this kind of stuff.

I think I’ve reported this as a bug to Google a couple times, in a couple different apps… as they do it in their other apps too.

The only thing that bothers me more are the, “sign-in with Google”, prompts on 90% of websites now. How about just giving the option to login with Google if so choose to login, and not spam it on every website just for visiting?

Google really has made the internet and worse place in so many ways.

It's OK. This is the dying, last gasp effort that a company makes when it has no way to innovate, no way to add any real value, no capacity to drive change internally, and has become completely non-user focused.

In short, it's what companies like IBM and Broadcom are now.

Shallow husks of their former self, mere holding companies for patents, with a complete lack of care and concern about any end-user retention.

Google search has turned completely into junk over the last two weeks. You may think "two weeks only?!", and you're right there, but this is a whole new level of stupid.

You may not be getting this where you are, but here searches are constantly prepended with human checks, searches can take up to 5+ seconds, you name it. They literally spend so little on maintaining and working on their search engine, that it's effectively unusable much of the time now. I don't care whether it's bot traffic, or what, and no it's not just me, or my ISP. This is wide-scale.

It takes so long I just click on an alternate search engine and search there. I don't have time to waste in their inanity.

Any sane and sensible company wouldn't entirely trash and destroy their mainline product, which is key to drive users to experience Google products. But this degree of sheer, unbridled arrogance is what topples empires. The thought that it really doesn't matter, flows off of google as a foul stench.

Look at Microsoft of old, the god of arrogance. Once the most dominant, powerful tech company in the world. They were king. Browser king. OS king. Everything king. Now they are barely noticed by large swaths of the market.

So goes Alphabet these days.

>Look at Microsoft of old, the god of arrogance. Once the most dominant, powerful tech company in the world. They were king. Browser king. OS king. Everything king. Now they are barely noticed by large swaths of the market.

Have they ever been more valuable than now?