Chrome’s breaking and entering

I got pissed at Chrome the other day. This is not the first user-hostile thing Chrome did – off the top of my head, I remember the updater fiasco from some years ago, and the more recent auto-installation of a 4GB file – but as you’ll see, this one is squarely in my wheelhouse. The transgression: Chrome took over a shortcut on my Mac – Ctrl+G – and it used it to throw me into Chrome’s version of Gemini that I have never used or was interested in using. Moreover, it decided it’s okay for Ctrl+G to put me there even if I pressed the shortcut outside of Chrome. I was never asked by Chrome if it’s okay to do so. The way I found it’s installed it was in a very unpleasant way: I tried to use Ctrl+G in my coding editor to jump to a specific line, and I got this instead: Stuff like that can make you feel like you lost your mind. I have no idea what this window is supposed to do, where did it come from, or even – initially – why it appeared. Note that it doesn’t even identify itself as either…