Reading more information gives a somewhat altered view and though incomplete, at least it seems there is some reasoning behind the dual upgrade, though "Default Browser" seems an unnecessary territory grab to resolve a general aggravation.

There was a time when Flash did not work in the Chrome Browser and because using it in any browser had always been a pain because of the "LSO" problem of locally stored objects. Flash cookies were not regular .txt cookies stored in your browser's Cookies files, they were hard to find little .swf files and because browsers used Flash as a plugin it had to be activated for sites to read those LSOs. Beginning in 2011, Google changed the way Flash worked in their browser, partly to defend users but also to give users a way to keep Adobe Flash updated automatically. Flash became an integrated part of the Chrome browser. If you have ever tried to use Adobe's abominable Installers you can see why this could be seen as a user benefit. Apparently Google's integration of Flash allowed the browser to "sandbox" Flash until it installed a new version when Flash security issues were known. Techcrunch wrote it back then: [techcrunch.com...]

Other browsers continue to use Flash as a plugin and it continues to cause issues because of the local file storage. Adobe has some information too, (not dated) that gives some information: [helpx.adobe.com...]

Since it looks like Chrome is the only major desktop browser with Flash integrated and auto-updated, it is mutually beneficial for Chrome and Adobe to cross promote.

Does Flash Update install Chrome as your new Default?

why yes it does, and it sucks... i don't care what the reasoning is behind it. Its goog, prob just another way to slip one over on you.

most people this happens to don't even know why it happened, or why their browser as suddenly changed......most don't like it and go back to using their browser of choice, in which that browser will ask to be default once again "most of the time"

run into soooooooo many people with it installed, i ask them which one do they use, most say FF...IE whatever followed by i have no idea how that even got there or why they have it. "it just showed up one day"

its like they are taking a page right out of all the toolbar spam people! Heck just tonight i clicked a link from youtube to a goog hosted page and got a big old hold it right there your opera browser sucks and you can't view this page until you install chrome...with a nice big install me now link.

i left, but how many hundreds of thousands hit that link.....plenty.

maybe one day they'll get ballsy enough to display that on google.com