Originally Posted by
bikerbob38
While I do not question what you say, I suspect in regard to my $900 Trek, whatever developments have occurred to enable safe cross chaining, it is not going to be seen on anything other than top-level road bikes.
No, it is mostly about the chain. The moment 9 speed comes into the picture, the "big-big concerns" become a thing of the past.
As for "top-level road bikes", it is actually the other way around: top-level road bikes often have
shorter chainstays (e.g. rear wheel pushed forward under the seat), meaning that they experience much larger chain skew in big-big configuration. But even these bicycles today have no issues whatsoever with big-big. Meanwhile, your Verve 3 is not even remotely like that - being a "comfort" bike, it has relatively long chainstays. For this bike big-big would not be an issue even if you put some ancient groupset with some ancient chain on it.
Every time you read something about "avoid big-big" or similar nonsense, it is just some nostalgic individual trying to create a reality distortion to bring back the "spirit of the 80s" into our era. You know, those times when there was still some bounce in their bungees and when their drivetrain expertise was still applicable...