Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

No not even close by every single possible measure.

I was there, I suffered through it, Google would have to make TONS of hostile moves for that fact to change.

I have no interest in the arguments of a closed source subscription service that wants me to switch to the bundled browser of the wealthiest company on earth's most popular consumer OS, lecturing me about using the 4th wealthiest company on earth's browser that I freely installed.

The most important one from an anti-trust perspective, every device I've ever had Chrome on I've had to seek out and install/make default Chrome, that includes my mobile devices which used the manufactures browser by default.

If I want to use chromium I can, Safari has been VERY late in implementing certain industry spec standards (SSE's, web sockets, IndexedDB API, animations, relative color syntax, container queries, a bunch of <video> stuff, flexbox, the list goes on and on.)

Safari hasn't actually been particular far behind implementing industry standards. As far as I can tell, it's more that people seem to believe that Google dictates industry standards and base everything on when Chrome supports it as opposed to when it actually gets standardized.

SSE's

W3C draft standard in 2012. Supported in Safari in 2010.

web sockets

This one is true. IETF standard 2011. Supported fully in Safari 2013.

IndexedDB API

W3C recommended standard in 2015. Supported in Safari in 2014.

animations

If we're talking the Web Animations API, it hasn't been standardized yet (W3C working draft) and level 2 isn't even that far.

relative color syntax

Not standardized yet. It's currently a W3C working draft.

container queries

Not standardized yet. It's currently a W3C working draft.

a bunch of <video> stuff

Need specifics.

flexbox

W3C candidate recommendation 2018. Supported in Safari 2013.

This is very misleading, compare implementation timelines between browsers and you'll see that Safari has implemented many of these things year(s) after chromium, firefox and even opera. This of course was because they have tried as much as possible to push people to closed source/walled garden apps.

I'd argue calling non-standard chrome/firefox/opera features "standards" is misleading.

This is plain bad faith. If you know anything about web standards, you already know the W3C process requires candidate implementations and interoperability before a standard reaches its later stages. Other browsers implemented the standards earlier because they participated in that process; calling those implementations "non-standard chrome/etc features" is absurd.