firefox allows you to disable website font desires. just set everything to you favorite fixed width font.
sites using custom fonts for icons instead of proper vector graphics will look weird, but meh. just click the square instead of the 3 lines for the menu. didn't even lost any usability after you learned one useless symbol for another.
also google is not a good example as you make it...
if your two friends don't use a feature, it can be dropped. that's the origin of sites only working with IE6 buttons (to keep with the age of the article) or noways things crashing unless your browser implements the latest buggy and non standard features that chrome is pushing.
also, remember, even the standard stuff (w3c) was always written and worked on folks in the payroll of companies whose main business was selling advertisement.
client certs (from the time the article mentions) are supposed to be used for consumers, hence no fancy chain like you mention, which was intended for b2b.
for cliente using a browser, the site would provide the user once with much less overhead and costs and red tape, using it own cert/private keys, which do have the full chain. it was basically a better way to be always logged without forever plain text cookies, as we actually got. or even worse, baked in the publisher owned OS/browser as google mamaged to fool everyone into.
sites using custom fonts for icons instead of proper vector graphics will look weird, but meh. just click the square instead of the 3 lines for the menu. didn't even lost any usability after you learned one useless symbol for another.
also google is not a good example as you make it...