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inconsistencies, needless complex-
ity, bad compromises, misses a lot of
ripe opportunities, and more. I would
flunk students in my (hypothetical)
protocol design class if they submit-
ted it. HTTP/2.0 also does not improve
your privacy. Wrapping HTTP/2.0 in
SSL/TLS may or may not improve your
privacy, as would wrapping HTTP/1.1
or any other protocol in SSL/TLS. But
HTTP/2.0 itself does nothing to im-
prove your privacy. This is almost tri-
ply ironic, because the major drags on
HTTP are the cookies, which are such
a major privacy problem the European
Union has legislated a notice require-
ment for them. HTTP/2.0 could have
done away with cookies, replacing
them instead with a client-controlled
session identifier. That would put us-
ers squarely in charge of when they
want to be tracked and when they
don’t—a major improvement in priva-
cy. It would also save bandwidth and
packets. But the proposed protocol
does not do this.
The good news is that HTTP/2.0
probably does not reduce your privacy
either. It does add a number of “finger-
printing” opportunities for the server
side, but there are already so many
ways to fingerprint via cookies, Java
Script, Flash, among others, that it
probably does not matter.
You may perceive webpages as load-
ing faster with HTTP/2.0, but probably
only if the content provider has a global
network of servers. The individual com-
puters involved, including your own,
will have to do more work, in particular
for high-speed and large objects like
music, TV, and movies. Nobody has
demonstrated a HTTP/2.0 implemen-
tation that approached contemporary
wire speeds. Faster? Not really.

That also answers the question about the environmental footprint: HTTP/2.0 will require a lot more computing power than HTTP/1.1 and thus cause increased CO2 pollution adding to climate change. You would think a protocol intended for tens of millions of computers would be the subject of some green scrutiny, but surprisingly— at least to me —I have not been able to find any evidence the IETF considers environmental impact at all —ever.