[andrekandre]

when you are google, unilaterally releasing and pushing a major new feature for “the web” has an entirely different meaning and implication to it compared to, sadly, mozilla, or some other player (even apple to some extent) because of their huge market/mind share.

in that scenario “wouldn’t it be cool” is not a good enough reason, and for a major feature such as this, skepticism is healthy and warranted... the “web browser” is slowly being transformed into “the google browser” and we have no one to blame but ourselves

[Touche]

The consensus opinion seems to be, from this thread and elsewhere, "While Google is not doing anything wrong by standards in this case, because they have the power/potential to do something wrong by standards we must oppose this as well."