I had a flashback to the days of web portals. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I like that they're trying something because complacency is never a good thing. You have to try things to see if they work.

I think the biggest allure of this is that there are people with simple needs that want their technology to "just work" as they said. I also agree with owlish's comment in that there are some quirks that need rapid alleviation that aren't being addressed like click-to-play and dropping extensions doesn't seem like a good way to approach this.

I applaud the experimentation so long as the end results are choices we can make for ourselves.