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by CharlesW 286 days ago
> Your argument against Google's monopoly would make a lot of sense if it was impossible to uninstall Chrome from Android…

Wrong. "Chrome is already installed on most Android devices, and can't be removed." https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95319
1 comments
cnst 286 days ago
Google's support article is wrong/misleading. You can uninstall all app updates for Chrome. You can disable Chrome. Once disabled, it cannot run again, unless you expressly enable it. It's basically equivalent to an uninstall for most purposes.

The latest trend in OS design are an immutable system partition, so, obviously, you cannot modify the underlying system image, neither on macOS, nor iOS, nor Android, but what evidence do you have that doing an overlay disable isn't enough?

I've been using Android for years, and have not seen funny business after I disable Chrome. You can use Brave or Vivaldi or Yandex Browser or Opera in place of Chrome at all times. Or Firefox in many cases. I routinely have fully functioning test devices with stock Android without any Google Accounts or any Chrome. Everything just works the way it should. Including the banking apps installed through Aurora Store through F-Droid, as well as the streaming apps like Amazon Prime Video etc. Again, all of this works without a Google Account in any way on my side as an end-user, and it's expected to continue working even in 2027 even if the trial they've announced goes through worldwide. It works on any Pixel device, it works on any Motorola device, it even works on Samsung, too.

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mzajc 285 days ago
> I've been using Android for years, and have not seen funny business after I disable Chrome.

You have not seen any funny business because Chrome WebView, which many applications depend on, is a separate application. Developer settings let you change it to another application, but only from a hardcoded list of package names and only if they're installed to /system. There are also no non-Chromium WebView implementations available to my knowledge.

So no, unless you're OK with breaking applications that use WebView, you can't remove Chrome from an Android smartphone.

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