EV had one advantage: It allowed browser vendors to push for improved standards (like Certificate Transparency adoption) with minimal push-back. It's easy to co

EV had one advantage: It allowed browser vendors to push for improved standards (like Certificate Transparency adoption) with minimal push-back. It's easy to complain about expensive security measures for run-of-the-mill certificates, it's much harder to argue about such measures for special extra-secure ones. And since CAs wanted the EV cash cow, they implemented CT and other improvements, and once they had the code, they had little reason to object against applying the same requirement to regular certificates. Another advantage is that when my bank requires me to enter a verified-by-visa password on lookslikephishingbutreallyismybank.com, I can actually verify (with a reasonable degree of certainty) who the site belongs to - even if they could, attackers generally won't go through the effort of getting a similar name. But that's a power user feature.