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Didn't we do this to ourselves, though? The tech community did decide that vendor lock-in is okay, walled gardens are okay and also that a browser monopoly is okay.

My impression is that this is what's different this time: it was chosen by developers themselves

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I think Chromium/Chrome won because it was the better tech product and also mostly open source and free to use. Closer to web standards, faster to use, isolated process rendering etc. This was and still is fueled by lot's of money, coming from platform economics, not from a walled garden strategy in the sense of AOL (proprietary standards, locked down access). Users actually like it, because it's free and works well. Developers like it because it's actively supported including dev tools and has a large enough user base to treat it as the default platform. It's just not possible to have a competing product based on the same open standards if you don't have the same amount of cash to give it away for free. And IT budgets are cash-strapped outside of the VC bubble too, it makes sense to choose the market leader and code against that platform. Similar to the old "Best viewed with Internet Explorer 3" back then, but now at least with better standard compatibility.

Didn't we do this to ourselves, though?

Does it matter?

We still give cancer treatment to smokers. We still give dialysis to alcoholics. We still pull the plastic out of our own oceans.

Not for free where I live. They have to pay for the treatment.

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