A long time ago we had something called "standards" that were intended to solve this problem. The idea was that developers of different browsers would get together in a neutral forum and agree common ground that everyone would support. That way developers could reliably build upon that common ground and expect their products to operate correctly in any browser. It was an excellent idea that heralded the success of the modern WWW.

Naturally this enforced competition wasn't in Google's interests as its browser became dominant and it adopted the infamous Microsoft strategy to deal with the threat. Apparently we're fast approaching the extinguish phase.

The correct solution to this is for influential public bodies not to insist upon supporting any specific browser or browsers but instead to once again support open web standards and therefore free access to their information and services for all.

This is almost certainly in their own interests anyway. Google has a nasty habit of suddenly killing off its non-standardised extensions. Relying on functionality that other browsers don't necessarily support as well seems unwise.