The popular graphical browsers keep growing in size and complexity but I am still doing the same basic tasks on the web, i.e., retrieving files and consuming them. For these basic tasks, the so-called "modern" browsers are overkill. Chrome is something like 150MB with dynamic libraries. The text-only browser I am using to submit this comment is a 1.3MB static binary.^1
1. It does not matter which one. Generally, all of them can be modified and re-compiled to suit personal tastes, a process that (compared to compiling Firefox, Chromium, etc.) is relatively quick and only requires modest computing resources. There is no shortage of people with both the skill and the time to write such text-only browsers. Whether we can we say the same for those with both the skill and time to write "modern" graphical browsers intended to compete with the likes of Chrome is left as a question for the reader. Users of "modern" web browsers have very little control over them. We never see anyone report they disliked something about Firefox, Chrome, etc., so they modified the source and re-compiled. On the contrary, we routinely see people report they switched from the browser of one "tech" company profiting from online advertising to the web browser of another. Or we see people reporting use of some browser "extension" that the "tech" company browser vendor can disable at any time.