None of that stuff appears on the default screen layout though. I mean, I agree some of it is useless cruft (but seriously: you put malware detection on that list?!?!). And that's true for pretty much all mature software.

But as far as "just give me what I want" I continue to think Chrome does it better.

I think the only strong argument on that side is one you don't make: on first run, Chrome stops and asks you to sign in to your Google account. I do that willingly, because I really like bookmark synchronization. But it's definitely not a "minimal browser" thing and if you're not a Google user it's probably pretty annoying.