Google fonts - why can't just anybody do that?

Hi all:

Uninformed question follows :

I have always been somewhat baffled as well as irritated by the widely-accepted fact that there's no reliable way to embed fonts into a website. My understanding has always been that cross-browser issues and copyright issues prevented embedding from being a viable option. However, I'm just wondering how Google and other font-linking services accomplish this and why I couldn't do the same thing on a local website using high-quality open source fonts, of which there are thousands available.

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