In game mode if you navigate to library then to non-steam, if your list is empty it will prompt you to install Chrome. Maybe it was somewhere else, but yes, the prompt exists regardless.
Edit: Picure I got from the Interner to illustrate my comment:
Edit 2: More proof that it never happened and either I'm imagining things or making it up:
Did they install chrome in desktop mode and Steam picked it up and asked if they wanted a shortcut to it? From what I can tell you get Firefox by default in desktop mode?
Nope... It's literally just a placeholder to allow people in game mode to install chrome and access the Internet without having to switch to desktop mode.
Until they make a better way to add non-Steam shortcuts in game mode.
Never had any prompt for google services in 2+ years of owning a sd, i don't know why you're so affirmative about something you don't actually seem to be sure about
Worse. Steam is basically built on top of CEF, which is not much better than Electron.
It's amazing how deep Chromium (and web tech in general) got into everything. Microsoft - which I regarded for how light and well optimized Windows 8.1 was - went from using Chromium for Edge to using it basically everywhere. Latest observation is how you open Copilot app, chat a little and see how it eats 4 GB of RAM and lags like hell, on a higher end business laptop.
It was basically a faster 7 (also less hungry). Universally hated Metro stuff can be get rid of easily. Plus it had better forward compatibility - I could run some apps that said to require windows 10 which I knew didn't work on 7.
I installed AdGuard Home (pihole alike) and blocked all Google then my deck wasn't able to sync my game saves, I had to allowlist steam.googlecloudsomethingsomething in order for cloud saves to work