Carl D wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2024 at 8:15am:

Exactly.

And sometimes when downloading software,
they'll give you a couple of options, like
"standard version - recommended" or
"custom version" —which is where you
can uncheck the auto download of Chrome,
or whatever other nasties they've included.


Too many IT illiterate people go for "standard".   

In 2019 technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler found that in
a typical week of browsing, Chrome allowed thousands more
cookies to be stored than Mozilla Firefox.

Fowler pointed out that because of its advertising businesses,
despite the privacy controls it offers users, Google is a major
producer of third-party cookies and has a financial interest
in collecting user data; he recommended switching to Firefox,
Safari, or Brave.

Personally, I steer clear of any software associated with
Google, and I don't have a Google account or use Gmail.
Google has now become the 21st century's overbearing
technical monolith that was Windows twenty years ago.

Google has now locked YouTube for anybody who won't
register an account with them (like me!).  I can still view
of course, but one can't comment without a Google account FFS. 

   This is typical of this bastard company.