I don't actually see the problem. If you're on a local network, there's no practical way to deal with certificates, so use http. Chrome will fall back. Problem solved.

If http support ever gets truly removed, I will be very upset. But that hasn't happened, so what is there to complain about?

HTTP is effectively considered legacy by the big web actors these days. More and more APIs are HTTPS-only (often for good reasons) and the "insecure" warnings you get from using HTTP become more intrusive every year.

The trajectory is pretty clear, the long term plan is to phase out HTTP completely. And I'm not against it, but I need a solution for LAN devices, and it doesn't exist at the moment because the big web actors do everything in the cloud these days and they don't care about this use case.

I AM against it, because it puts more centralized censorship power in the hands of the certificate authority.

Also, it completely cuts out "legacy" devices, basically anything more than 5 years old.

The Web is once again splitting into AOLized mainstream and "indie underground" that you have to make an effort to access.

Who is "the certificate authority" you're referring to here?

The OP means that in using https (and being forced to used https) you are also being forced into paying a 'third party' an annual fee just to get a valid certificate.

That 'third party' is one of the recognized 'certificate authorities'.

But the OPs point is by going https, you don't have a choice, you have to pay the certificate tax.