> what would stop everyone who doesn't like that from switching browsers instead of upgrading?
The fact that they're human beings with their own lives and finite attention spans. There is an entire body of work segmenting markets into categories like innovators, early adopters, early majority, etc.
Did you wait in line for an iPhone on launch day? Why not?
> If there was a truly efficient market
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman whats a truly efficient market?
> that speaks to a lack of a competitive environment
The environment is plenty competitive. There is no further proof required of this than the continued rise of new companies that displace their competition. In a thriving ecosystem there is lots of death as well as lots of birth.
> The market has failed
It hasn't, it just doesn't move on timescales you can relate to easily. Organizing people to make and distribute things takes unimaginable time and energy. Supposing that a centrally planned intervention can be more efficient is the height of communist fallacy. It has failed every time it has been tried.
the environment is not competitive enough. There is no further proof required of this than that google can abuse its users and make products worse for years, perhaps decades, without experiencing market punishment for it
the end determines the sufficiency of the means: if the end is that google can do that, the current means are insufficient, because that is bad
> Organizing people to make and distribute things takes unimaginable time and energy.
it absolutely does, far, far moreso when you're going up against a giant like google
solution: slay the giant. We've tried not doing so, and it brought us here, to this failure point.
I do, if this efficient market hypothesis were to hold true
The changes to the browser were immediate from one version to the next, what would stop everyone who doesn't like that from switching browsers instead of upgrading?
The fact that it isn't immediate kind of proves the point: the market doesn't always favor the best product, because dominant players can exploit their market position to make anti-features and hide them from users
If there was a truly efficient market, this behavior would be immediately punished. That it was not, proves that there is not.
If a dominant company can abuse its users for a decade or more before the market handles the problem, that speaks to a lack of a competitive environment, or anticompetitive behavior. The market has failed, and thus some intervention is warranted to stop the abuse sooner than that. I propose for your economic theory, though, the title of "eventual efficiency" in markets :)