Google Fonts and all the free fonts that ship in Debian/Ubuntu are as close to a de facto standard as anything on the internet. Why not just lazy load them on first launch of a browser (or first use on a webpage) and cache them forever?
Now, the cache is per-site.[1] The arguments for partitioning the cache apply to fonts just as much as to other resources.
There have been thoughts[2] and proposals[3] around ways to make shared libraries without running into those issues, but nothing has really materialised AFAIK.
The broad issue is that 'just lazy load on first use' creates privacy reasons, and the idea of picking a list of popular resources to cache on launch never really goes anywhere.
[1]: https://developers.google.cn/web/updates/2020/10/http-cache-...
[2]: https://hillbrad.github.io/sri-addressable-caching/sri-addre...