Yeah it's really off putting. A lot of people here cannot come to grips with the fact that many tech companies are big because their customers people love their products; this includes Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Nobody is pulling a fast one on me when I buy my iPhone and Mac. I know full well what Google and Facebook are doing with my data when I use their sites.

I. Don't. Care.

They have products and services that I want and I'm happy to fork over cash or data to get them. Please take your conspiracies elsewhere.

Please let me know where I either stated something as a fact that isn't, or didn't point out that something was my personal opinion, interpretation or how I remembered it. The closest thing I find that might resemble a conspiracy theory in my post above is probably the part about convient bugs that makes Google products lag in other browsers.

In that particular case I agree: it might just be that the front-end devs at Google are seriously unprofessional or that their QA team is really understaffed or bad or something.

But I think I pointed to that alternative, just that I didn't find it plausible.

Reasonable alternative explanations for why the search results page would keep one core on my machine spinning up, but obly in Firefox or why there's always something with Calendar (but only in Firefox) might be accepted.

But personally, even as a one man team at the moment, I try to make sure it works in all browsers.

These are not conspiracy theories. They’re practices of a search engine monopolist trying to get an unfair advantage in other markets. Compare and contrast to old Microsoft and browser bundling.