Dave Winer, on Google’s push for HTTPS everywhere:

A lot of the web consists of archives. Files put in places that no one maintains. They just work. There’s no one there to do the work that Google wants all sites to do. And some people have large numbers of domains and sub-domains hosted on all kinds of software Google never thought about. Places where the work required to convert wouldn’t be justified by the possible benefit. The reason there’s so much diversity is that the web is an open thing, it was never owned.

I think the move to HTTPS is good for most websites, but it’s unfair for browser makers to punish owners of simple webpages that haven’t switched to the encrypted protocol. Maybe we just need a longer transitionary period. Or perhaps browsers should only warn users if the webpage they’re viewing includes text fields and forms that request user data. That’s far from a perfect solution, but dismissing large portions of the web because they aren’t HTTPS seems like a bad idea too.