> And hosting a font file entails dumping it next to your index.html file and adding some very basic CSS. Not exactly difficult.

If you are a 60-year-old woodworker living in Appalachia trying to set up an online store to sell hand-carved flutes, this task is essentially impossible.

So they will have outsourced their website to some external entity that does possess the required technical knowledge. This required technical knowledge should include the ability to host a simple file.

So congratulations, you've regulated a middleman into the process. What a great day for humanity and a victory for regulatory capture.

The 60-year-old woodworker living in Appalachia will be relieved to know that browsers are able to display text in their online store without having to add any font files at all. If the 60-year-old woodworker living in Appalachia decides they absolutely must have a custom font on their website then self-hosting that font file is not any more impossible than adding the HTML/CSS required to fetch it from Google.

And then EVERY site needs to serve the same font? The browser can no longer cache it across sites?

How is that relevant here?

Caching was never mentioned as being a requirement. I'm only giving the most basic solution for achieving compliance with regards to hosting a font file.

Scope creeping, on a Sunday no less... where are we headed

I don't think they can right now anyway since the cache is segrgated by origin to prevent leaking cache timings.