> "Do you really want a browser to be gigabytes large? Especially on mobile it's not viable"

Absolutely, i would rather give the browser 50 GB even on my phone over paying my mobile operator for downloading the same data over and over again.

And it wouldn't take anywhere near that much, I am sure 80% of most used fonts are only a couple dozen, that wouldn't tale gigabytes

It also doesn't have to be a binary proposition.

For example, Google Maps by default doesn't load maps of the entire world when you install it. However, it does let you opt-in to pre-downloading specific areas that you frequently travel.

Browsers could do the same by simply adding an opt-in to download / cache common assets like fonts, jquery, etc.

From a privacy point of view,

Not embedding all of them would allow tracking. Caching all web fonts would allow tracking.

The solution is embedding all the popular ones so everyone has them and it can't be used as a signal.

It would be interesting to gather a list. uBlock Origin can disable Web Fonts

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

so it should be possible to log. And given a list it is not hard to download.

> Maybe if browsers standardized on shipping, say, 20 carefully chosen fonts (not necessarily the most popular ones, just a good variety of different types of fonts), the smaller websites would follow and use them; but I think any major brand likes to distinguish themselves and have a custom unique font.

It may be not really carefully chosen, but didn't Microsoft have done this already? (Core fonts for the Web, https://web.archive.org/web/20020124085641/http://www.micros...). The reason they have discontinued this programme is that it actually costs them some money (as the fonts are not owned by Microsoft.)

Also, how would you cater to non-LGC (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic) users?

Yep Asian fonts in particular are _huge_. It's a complex topic.

I mean I’ve said it before but shipping like 20 (montserrat, raleway, open sans, etc) would cover most websites who use Google Fonts.

You might be right, but the next question is fashion. Will the same fonts be used still in 5 years, or (more likely) the new hotness will arrive? Should the browsers update the list each year? Then some fonts that were available will suddenly be not? Not so great.

Web standards and browser features are generally built for the long term and backward compatibility. I mean, it's not impossible to find a solution, but it's definitely not "let's download some fonts and bundle with the browser, done" kind of problem.

When you control 70% of the desktop market share, and you are releasing an evergreen browser that updates weekly, if not more frequently, any argument about not being able to stay on top of changes in the environment become rather silly.

We keep root ssl certificates up to date, surely we can handle a few fonts.

At least it is not a problem for Google, since it controls both the most popular browse and most popular web font distribution channels.

Microsoft's old "core fonts for the web" are still widely in use. (including here on HN.)

Aside from Arial, which core fonts are still used widely?

Right-click and inspect element.

Do we really want to invite a couple of browser vendors to set the course of typographic design for the next few decades?

I believe already there but maybe a set of categories of fonts like UI, sans, monospace, handwriting could be alias usual for all websites and apps