[IIsi50MHz]

But… I "need" those tools to undo the harm that some websites try to inflict on me. I use them almost daily to delete things like taking 25% of my window for a scrolling and animated banner trying to sell me their irrelevant-to-me Excel add-in (annoyingly, this example bypasses all adblockers, comes with a widget that resizes it to a 'mere' 5% of my window, and forgets my choice every time I load or reload any of their pages). I also sometimes use them to repair malfunctioning pages so I can actually use them as intended.

Sure, you could say that I should just use this "Developer Edition", but that requires me to have access to install it on every puter I walk up to (just to be prepared for somewhat common web attrocities like full-page elements that prevent me from interacting with the page in ways that I feel should never be forbidden).

I don't tend to see 'warning' messages in the dev console that seem to be attempts to dissuade me from using the dev tools. Maybe…twice in >20 years?

[LawTalkingGuy]

If there were two separate versions of Chrome you can be sure there'd be people trying to block the dev version because they'd think using it is hacking or someone being tricked and everyone would be adding 'no-dev' scripts to their pages and we'd lose out by moving the web closer to PDFs.