A viewer / browser is not an editing program. A viewer can assume sRGB when no ICC profile is attached or not. This difference in assumptions made results in different outcomes of the colour management.
Propheticus - I think you are spot-on here in your analysis. I believe the increasing use of wider gamut displays may be producing a resurgence of such complaints. Embedding the profile is still best practice in my opinion.
Following standards is the best practice.
Colour-agnostic applications ignoring standards are the problem, not better displays.
Millions and millions of sRGB images are uploaded every day. Multiply by the size of an sRGB profile. How much space and bandwidth is wasted every year?
I don’t consider wide gamut displays to be a problem, far from it. But I do agree that it’s the applications that need to improve. In the meantime I will continue to embed color profiles and hope that the added 100 kb or so burden can somehow be borne.
If that was the basis for your earlier question, I suspect that you know better than I.
You must also know that nearly all profiles of type 'display' are matrix type, about 5 or 10Kb and I don't know why @eriepa is using anything different for posting images on-line.
In v.4 they try to achieve perceptual intent (few sRGB users can create an environment where it works), so 60+KB (while basically 0.5KB is all what is needed for the so-called simplified sRGB).
Last time that I looked, V4 was quite unpopular ...
... off topic but some may not know that a matrix profile's setting of 'perceptual' gets you 'relative colorimetric' in many applications.... theoretically not so with V4.
Thanks, Jim - yes, the profiles for this purpose are much smaller, even tiny. I had given a quick look at my profile folder and my eyes must have landed on printer profiles. Sorry for that. But doesn't the very small size of these profiles help make the case for embedding same?