Don't assume everybody uses their computer like you do and only runs one browser maximized on their only monitor connected to their powerhouse of a computer equipped with a last-gen CPU and 64 gigabytes of ram.

For example, I sometimes play very resource-hungry games and like to have a youtube video on my second monitor while I play. But that's not possible on my gaming PC, so I have to youtube-dl the video first and run it in vlc instead.

That seems like exactly what you are doing. So you want to run a game and a youtube video and browse at the same time, while on a low end PC. Cool. A lot of people don't use their computer like that.

I can do all of that at the same time as is...

What kind of ridiculous, fallacious logic is this?

First of all, it's not a low end PC, it's an expensive gaming-dedicated rig barely a couple of years old. The amount of resources browsers consume is just ridiculously high.

Second, the argument that browsers should use all the resources and ram available in the world only holds if your computer is dedicated to web browsing. This is quite obviously false - I shouldn't even have to give you my case as an example. PCs are general computing machines.

Web browsers are too hungry for what they do. Not every tab is meant to run a full blown web app with webgl and megabytes of javascript code. The point I was making was that what I'm not able to do with Firefox/Chrome, I'm able to do with vlc. That is preposterous for something that wants to be "the future of the desktop".

What sort of hardware are you talking about? Just curious.

I can youtube+[Witcher3|DarkSouls3|Skyrim+10GBMods] just fine with my 4k series i7, 16GB, GTX970.

Then that should be configurable. Personally having 8G of ram dedicated to my browser limits the possibilities of the machine I have.

(remembering most Macs come default with 8G of ram)