HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 don't require HTTPS because "it benefits Google" or whatever, but rather because it's the only way those protocols could be usable to begin wi

HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 don't require HTTPS because "it benefits Google" or whatever, but rather because it's the only way those protocols could be usable to begin with. It is possible to use HTTP/2 without HTTPS, but the problem is that there were a lot of systems that modified unencrypted HTTP traffic and got confused by HTTP/2 protocol - it looked nothing like HTTP/1. The easiest workaround for this issue was to require HTTPS, so that's what was done. Also when HTTPS is being used the server can say during TLS handshake that it supports HTTP/2 avoiding the cost in having to figure out whether the server supports HTTP/2 - this cannot be done with HTTP as there is no handshake. If a web browser were to assume the server supports HTTP/2 it would make initial HTTP/1 requests slower as it would have to try HTTP/2 first (and then you would have people complaining about Google making HTTP/1 slower to make HTTP/2 look more attractive). If a web browser would say that it supports HTTP/2 it would make HTTP/2 requests slower as it would have to try HTTP/1 first (which would slow down HTTP/2 when it was supposed to be fast).