Maybe I'm being naïve, but why don't browsers ship with more popular fonts bundled to avoid problems like these? I have no issue with any of my browsers taking up fractionally more space for an extensive cache of the most popular web fonts when the payoff is better performance on so many sites.
Of course, servers should still be capable of serving the fonts that the client requires to render the content correctly, but the browser should be equipped to make that happen as quickly as possible.
Of course, servers should still be capable of serving the fonts that the client requires to render the content correctly, but the browser should be equipped to make that happen as quickly as possible.