Strong disagree. IE was bad because it was heavily tied to the interests of its controlling entity. Things like ActiveX broke the OS-agnostic principles of the web. As it was the bundled default browser used by the majority, and therefore the main target of webdevs, its quirky behaviour became a way to enforce its use and help make non-Windows users second-class web citizens.

Now Chrome is well established in its number one spot, we’re seeing more initiatives from Google to use that dominance to similarly create dependencies for users on the Google ecosystem.

Yeah, but IE didn’t either start out its life as a shitty browser. It was the stagnation after they reached the monopoly that got it there.

I don’t think, Chrome’s path will go exactly the same, as for example Google has an actual financial interest in the internet at least being somewhat healthy/growing. But at the same time, there’s also aspects that might make the journey worse this time around:

• Google has significant web properties that average users will want to continue using, even if e.g. Google starts using proprietary APIs on there.
• Google is a lot slier than Microsoft in this regard. For example, Android was open at first, but over years it grew this proprietary abscess (Play Services), which they forced onto vendors behind the scenes and stuff like that.