Did we read the same article, because that's not an accurate representation of what I read. Google is implementing an industry group standard. Sure, Google is part of that industry group, but so are Facebook and The Washington Post. I doubt Google can run away with the standard without other making a big stink out of it.
As long as Chrome actually follows the standard, characterizing this as "Google dictating what is and isn't acceptable for an ad" is not accurate.
I decided to check this. A simple google query and the first result[1] show you to be very wrong. Google does have a majority (with the top three spots being google properties totaling just under 72% of the market), but 7 out of 10 is by no means all.
1: https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/advertising-networks/
You stated as a publisher you better do what Google wants because they are the only guys with inventory. That's obviously false and undercuts whatever point it was supporting. That it isn't changed by a pithy response.
Microsoft tried to tie it in as much as they could to leverage it being the default and justify it being bundled, but the other vendors share at least an equal share of the blame for completely dropping the ball.
How long did Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4 linger? How many wasted resources were poured into things like the integrated page builder in Communicator instead of features? Do you remember trying to use Netscape 6 Beta or whatever it was called before it became Mozilla?
IE 5 and 6 were initially just that much better. Heck, IE was even the best browser on Mac for a while circa 2000-2002ish.
MS deserves a ton of extra blame for letting IE6 stagnate for five freaking years until Phoenix->Firebird->Firefox got them off their asses again, but don't blame them for having the better product when that initial war was won.
But, another key difference here is that Google has much more incentive to keep improving Chrome and web standards even if they get more and more market share, since their user-facing products are web properties, and Microsoft's were not at the time.
it is not in /data, so it takes up no extra space
Totally different than bundling it with the OS.
Except wait, they do that too.