[hrjet]

> I'm not sure if it's still this way, but Chrome used to load every tab on startup.

I used to avoid Chrome for the same reasons, but then I found an extension and, uh, extended it, to create:

https://github.com/hrj/sloth/

It forces all tabs into inactive state on startup. Also creates a new tab page (or switches to an existing one) to avoid loading the focussed historical tab.