Rakesh Agrawal / @rakeshsfnyc: Whenever I use a browser other than Chrome to access Gmail, I get a banner to use Chrome instead. If Google didn't need a distribution advantage, they wouldn't be paying Apple billions a year to be in Safari. I spent years working in search, and a chunk of that on the acquisition side. I'm as anti-Google as they come but this is a dumb move. Google's competitive edge is their ad network access. Browsers are a loss leader that to monetize you have to abuse user data unless you already own a search engine or ad network. Chromium is also one of the few useful open source browsers, and has a lot of funding from Google because of Chrome.