SVG is a pretty flexible format. Vector graphic editors often inject a lot of extraneous data to make their job easier. Unfortunately this excess data is just ignored by browsers and from that perspective just looks like bloat. In my opinion, output from editors such as Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator are not quite ready for the web, especially for purposes like clip-art. It's not at all rare to find files up on Open ClipArt with large chunks of the file that are not even used (extraneous gradients, filters, etc). I had an itching to learn a little Python so I used this as an excuse to create a script that would tidy up SVG files: Scour. Read the rest of this entry ...
I think the next next browser war will be about how to integrate online services into the browser itself - search plugins were only the beginning. As more and more people rely on things like GMail, Google Docs, Google Reader, and Google Maps it will only be natural for Google to integrate its online services into its Chrome browser. The question will be whether this is anticompetitive at all in the sense that the "hidden" APIs in Windows were considered anti-competitive. I do think Google will make its server-side hooks open and transparent (because it benefits by having other browsers integrate their services).