I agree that nothing about the current situation is ideal. These changes won't take us from a good situation to a bad one, it will just take us from a bad situation to another situation that's slightly differently bad.
I hope you're right that uBlock Origin can get people to switch from Chrome to Firefox on mobile... but proper Firefox has been on Android forever, yet Firefox's market share on mobile is pretty much non-existent. Why hasn't the "educate people about firefox + ublock" strategy worked there? Why do we think it would work better on iOS?
While this is a good question, It is not relevant to the point because Edge is still Chromium. So this still gives Google the dominant place it wants to take and monopoly on web standards.
You don't fix it by cementing a monopoly either.
> The solution here is to do what we did in the early 2000s, and educate people about firefox + ublock.
This was a much smaller tech-enabled population, and even that was moving mountains. I'm not saying it can't be done but it's important to recognize it's a very uphill battle since Chrome is not a bad browser and IE was.
This isn't even remotely the same game here.
Arguably they're already doing that. There's a shockingly high number of times that I click on something in Windows and it opens up Edge instead of Firefox, my default browser. Even Apple manages to respect my default browser on macOS.
Whatever one might think about Chrome on desktop, fact are that 1 - people install it on purpose, because they want to, not because they're forced, and 2 - it's supremely easy to replace, which is why google tries hard to tie itself into more (password manager obviously, but chrome apps at one point).
Chrome is open to competition, it's just that this competition is as much marketing and mind share as it is tech merit. What Edge and Safari are doing or trying to do is not open to competition.
(this does not mean chrome should not be reigned it, I believe it should)
You do not fix a tech monopoly issue by imposing a duopoly, especially not with each one in their own little garden with no cross over.
And you don't fix the issue of one way too big tech company having full control over the web through their browser by giving it or some of it to another way too big tech company, especially if that other company has already shown its propension to use its control of the stack to protect its own interest.
The solution here is to do what we did in the early 2000s, and educate people about firefox + ublock. On desktop after a large growth notably in europe, Firefox stagnated in speed and that's how Chrome take its headstart, but on mobile with google insistence on no extensions the game is still open.