I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any.
Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern".
That, and they paid money to surreptitiously bundle it with other software. Chrome is notorious for suddenly being mysteriously installed on relatives' computers: https://imgur.com/NIZk9Pd
And advertising something on your own property sure sounds reasonable, but I think it's a slightly different story when "your own property" is "the de facto homepage of the internet". That's what I meant by "abusing monopoly position".
"Complete your antivirus" has a pre-checked tickbox for a totally irrelevant product. And in the process agreeing to a license. That's pretty dark.
Maybe as someone with above-average technical ability this looks obvious to you. To a lot of people, it isn't. And this pattern is aimed at fooling the less technically literate.
yes it is, dark patterns refer to user-design decissions that arguably exploit human-weaknesses. In this case human-attention span (not noticing that you have to disable this option), lazyness(it costs effor to opt-out) and human confidence in authority (I trust avast with my AV, so I trust avast not to exploit my trust (but they do)).
Many app installers, including Adobe Flash, would install Chrome along whatever they install. In the case of Flash, there was a checkbox to disable it, but if you don't pay attention, you don't see it. And I think in that case, you might even end up with Chrome as your default browser.
The most interesting part in all this is that the Adobe Flash you just downloaded and installed is not even used by Chrome, which ships its own.
For example it used to be the case that whatever you downloaded from google or 3rd parties (google earth, picasa, oracle java etc.) automatically installed google chrome by default and set it as your default browser. This is on par with IE toolbar spamming in installers.
The most recent thing I've seen is where the boundaries of the browser and Google's web properties start to get blurred.
For example, signing into a Google site from Chrome also signs you into the browser; it's unclear how this happens, what personal information it compromises, and more than that it's an unexpected and unwelcome surprise when it happens.
Clearing Google cookies in Chrome also doesn't work, for related reasons. Try deleting all cookies in Chrome the immediately refreshing the list: Google cookies immediately re-appear.
It's not that these things are necessarily actually dangerous. But the blurring of the line between service and user agent scares me.
>signing into a Google site from Chrome also signs you into the browser
They eventually created an option to disable that behaviour after a lot of user complaints:
"While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome."
I know many many people that had chrome installed with out them activlity seeking it out, and had their default browser changed with out their permission
So much so that many many people I know that worked on helpdesk;s at the time where getting lots of complaints about "the internet is missing" meaning their Icons changed from the IE logo to the Chrome logo because chrome was changed to the default browser with out them understanding what happened.
Add to the fact that Chrome would also install in AppData to avoid having to have Admin rights to install so it could be install on corporate/enterprise systems by normal users...
Seriously, every time you used to open google docs with firefox, they asked to "try&download chrome" as it was faster (or whatever). I don't have the screenshots any longer but it was so bad I added to grease monkey.
Another example: Windows: Chrome, installation being under user profile to bypass any system checks during installation process itself and further updates.
I would argue the 'auto update' feature is actually a bit of a dark pattern. (I believe chrome was the first major browser to start this trend?)
It is ostensibly for security and benefits developers because of less fragmentation. But it actually hurts users in the long run because of the centralizing effect. It also enables chrome to sneak in features that users wouldn't necessarily accept.
Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern".
Or do you mean something else?