This is making me really curious because while Chrome is buttery smooth on my Macbook Pro, Firefox 57 is really sluggish, especially when creating/closing tabs. You can literally see the animation stuttering. Other times when a page loads it won't paint for some seconds even if it appears that it has completed loading. Is anyone else having these issues?
The idea of freeing your phone is cute, however, there are some considerable dangers.
* The software that you give access to your phone (be it drivers or the recovery images themselves) isn't signed by anyone. Some of the software isn't even available via HTTPS. I think it's a bad idea to trust some HTTP and unsigned executable more than Google, who are making all they can to ensure the integrity of anything that runs on your phone.
* Unlocking your bootloader is a bad idea. Google erases all your data whenever you unlock your phone[1]. They don't hate you, they've just realized the security issues that come from having an unlocked phone. Take this for example: You're at the airport and ready to leave. However, TSA stops you for a "random" check. They have your phone for about 5 minutes and there's nothing you can do about it. Now, they could ask you for your passcode but then you'd know something's wrong. Now, your bootloader is unlocked, which means they can see your device at firmware level and alter it to their liking it. Nothing can stop them from plating a backdoor in there or just making a copy of all your files and you wouldn't know. That's why Google does [1].
Point is, I should not be able to access a plaintext version of a website hosting such cryptographically crucial software/information.
It's obvious why it can be a grand target for Man in the Middle, defacement and worst of all integrity attacks. Apart from preventing many of the latter, implementing HSTS could have really mitigated the problem. Anyone who had already visited the site wouldn't see the defaced page. Furthermore, they could get added to an STS preloaded list[1], making the attack invisible to anyone using a modern browser.
If you are interested, the Wikipedia page[2] does a fair job at explaining more about why HSTS is needed.