Which competitors will be excluded by the increase in HTTPS? Which companies exactly are relying on the connections being unencrypted, and how are they able to monitor them?

And if Google's competitors are spying on HTTP rather than using tracking scripts, why does seemingly every page I visit load tracking scripts from a bunch of companies?

ISPs. HTTPS Everywhere and net neutrality laws are both endeavors designed to mitigate ISPs from providing ad networks and/or collecting data on Internet usage.

Of course, Google claims they do this for your benefit, but if it was for your benefit, they'd need to stop doing the same things with tracking scripts. This is how you can tell they are pushing these to reduce competition, not to increase your privacy.

I can't say I've ever seen Google claim HTTPS was intended to protect my privacy, but fair enough, I forgot that ISPs can do that in the US.

In one of the major announcements for Chrome, 'Moving towards a more secure web' (2016-09-08) [1], the Chrome Security Team writes:

"Chrome currently indicates HTTP connections with a neutral indicator. This doesn't reflect the true lack of security for HTTP connections. When you load a website over HTTP, someone else on the network can look at or modify the site before it gets to you."

The word 'modify' is a hyperlink to an article titled 'AT&T Hotspots: Now with Advertising Injection' [2] (ironically, a non-HTTPS site).

[1] https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-... [2] http://webpolicy.org/2015/08/25/att-hotspots-now-with-advert...