Again, simple kindergarten manners: If you think there is any reason people might object to what you want to be doing with/to their stuff, ask first and be prepared to hear "no".

I'm sure someone will say you should only install applications you trust, but where does that trust come from? How can I judge the trustworthiness of an application if I can't use it first? Must I trust some third party like a community of repo maintainers --not to mention corporate run repos-- and pretend that they all must have my best interest at heart and never make mistakes? Am I required to believe in the fantasy that once trustworthy software will always be so?

> MS is not forcing people to use their installer, they're not blocking you from using the default chrome installer.

That sentence makes no sense to me. The chrome installer is completely unrelated to this and MS is not shipping anything resembling a chrome installer. They are shipping their office installer (which you are kinda forced to use to install office), which unexpectedly(!) tampers with your chrome install.

> You're trying to infringe upon packaging rights

Nope.

Everything you are saying makes sense if you are talking about controlling the defaults of the software maintained/installed by the package. That's not what is happening here.