Most of those atrocities happened because IE was the popular browser at the time. Nobody would have built those things if no one was using IE, they built them because "everybody" was.

Chrome is in that same popularity catbird seat at the moment. There are entire websites that "everyone" needs to install Chrome Extensions to work with, and those are only Chrome Extensions. It is the same thing, different decade. It will be the same mess that IE left behind when Google decides working on a browser is boring and there are more promotions to be had in moving the team to building another Messenger or a another new Operating System.

> There are entire websites that "everyone" needs to install Chrome Extensions

Do you have examples? I've never heard of this.

Some have been Corporate Intranet things, which are also the most scary from IE hindsight because that's where IE6 infested the worst was Corporate Intranet things that became mission critical legacy code that stuck entire companies in IE6 for decades.

One of the big ones that is a huge company (that probably should know better, but here we are) is Salesforce and their Lightning Chrome Extension [1]. "Everyone" says that you should "always" have that extension when working with Salesforce, because Salesforce is horrible to work with if you don't. That's not even the only Salesforce Chrome Extension, if you are a developer or an admin there are two to three others to consider too. Instead of building a better web app, or a proper desktop app, Salesforce has become a "Chrome-only" worst of both worlds for a lot of its users.

[1] https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.lex_lightnin...

I suppose offline gDocs might qualify. I can't think of too many others that I have encountered.