I'm noticing a large uptick in "good engineering but terrible design and implementation choices in the name of security", and I wonder what's driving that.
I don't think that was ever the message. Chrome has always been "the fastest browser" rather than anything else, and it has lead to (much-needed IMO) substantial performance improvements from the other camps.
Ahem: "There are a lot of limitations to the kinds of applications that you can build today with web browsers. And the subset of things you can do is different for each browser. If one browser has a cool feature, that doesn't help -- it has to exist across all browsers in order for developers to use it." (Emphasis original)
But yeah, Google says they're not evil, so that makes anything they do non-evil...riiiiight. I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
- it's safe
- it's fast
- it's stable
- doesn't break the web
All of that in contrast with IE of that time, which failed all four of the above. Currently it's trying to stay somewhat safe, and ditched the other three in the process.