I wouldn't be okay with that, but it wouldn't be completely unjustified either. Google has put an incredible amount of effort into creating the delivery channe

I wouldn't be okay with that, but it wouldn't be completely unjustified either. Google has put an incredible amount of effort into creating the delivery channel for websites/webapps. Not just as in "let's make a good browser", but "let's have feature parity with the OS, while still having the security and ease of use that the OS can't match". (There was a giant Chromium team googlesheet somewhere tracking which features are still missing, but I can't find it at the moment.) For example: let's say you're selling stuff online. How does Chrome help you? * HTTP/3 makes your site load faster. HTTP/3 stems from QUIC, which was a Google thing. * CSS improvements mean that you can make it prettier. Google works on pushing new features into CSS. * Advanced video/image codecs mean that you can show higher-quality pictures to your customers (assuming constant bandwidth). Google works on codecs. * The very concept of evergreen browsers (I think Google has also put a lot of effort into making into happen?) means that you can save your money developing the website. * At the checkout, Chrome autofills the card and/or lets the customer use Google Pay. The card is synced between the customer's devices, using Google's servers. This is good for you. Easier payments = better conversion rate for you. * If the customer creates an account (which will help you sell them more things later), they might be logging in via Google. Or they might be using a password, which Google also autosyncs. Both options are good for you. It's you who derives extra money from the customer being able to easily log into their account and buy shoes etc. * Finally, if the web was insecure, people would be more hesitant to use it to buy stuff. Google works on making the web more secure (Google Project Zero and just in general a ton of security work being put into Chromium). This is not counting stuff that is Google and not Chrome per se. I'm not going to say that you have to pay Google for simultaneously working on 10–20 different areas of infrastructure that enables you to sell things and services to people. And heck, they also benefit from it (because ads). But if tomorrow Google said "everybody who makes money on the internet have to give us a cut", I would feel like they actually have a good case for it, having contributed to very large chunks of the infrastructure that enables me to do business on the internet.