Item — HN Reader

>More people are going to notice they’re using a different browser vs. using a different search engine.

Chromium Edge and Chrome have pretty much identical UI/UX. If you switch between Google and Bing, you will immediately notice the difference.

>most people that have phones and not computers probably don’t realize or know how they can change the default.

"80.12% of iOS users, used Safari as their default browser as of 2020." Source: https://zipdo.co/statistics/apple-safari/

About 20% of users changing the default browser is a big deal, especially when all browsers are identical (WebKit) under the hood.

1 comments

> If you switch between Google and Bing, you will immediately notice the difference.

Again, I'd argue that this may not be true for a lot of people. And even if they notice the difference, I'm not sure that a) they'd care, or b) they'd know how to do anything about it.

My wife/mom would probably ask me how to change their browser back, if the UX is different enough that they couldn't find their way around (but if not, then they won't care about that either).

But they're not going to care to change the default browser back, as the UX difference between the two has a much smaller gap. Only the results are different, if they may not even notice that.

> About 20% of users changing the default browser is a big deal, especially when all browsers are identical (WebKit) under the hood.

But this means that 80% users stick to the default (in this specific case). If these are users that don't care or don't know how to change the default, then the defaults matter more than the OP (and the linked article) suggest. And 80% is a much bigger deal than 20%.

People on HN really over estimate the average user. I start any troubleshooting with older family be starting with "Show me how you normally get on the Internet" because who knows which browser theyve already been tricked into using.

I'm not quite sure how - but I'm pretty certain my grandmother uses the web exclusively through her phones stock email client. I've tried to show her... but I always find her inside some webview spawned by the email app eventually.