Of late, I've noticed that many web sites seem to be using light grey text for many sections of their sites. Some such sections include - the text (link, usually) that shows in the status bar at the bottom of the browser when you hover the mouse over a link on their page, the indicator text in form fields to be filled in (e.g. the word "email" in the email address field), and many other elements on the page.
That light grey makes it much less readable.

Not sure whether is a new trend, or something to do with my browser settings (I haven't changed them lately, AFAIK), or Google Chrome, which is my browser. This is on Windows 7 running on a Dell Vostro laptop. I added the info about the laptop because I suspect the problem may even be due to my hardware settings, since I found the default brightness to be too high after I bought it, and changed it via Control Panel.
Would like to know what are some of the things I can check or change to solve this.
Thanks.