Comment by ocdtrekkie
Comment by ocdtrekkie 2 days ago
There are other key browser implementers. Google should not have more than an advisory role in any standards organization.
Comment by ocdtrekkie 2 days ago
There are other key browser implementers. Google should not have more than an advisory role in any standards organization.
Saying web users should define web standards is like saying laptop users should design CPUs. They lack the expertise to do this meaningfully.
Web authors? Maybe. WHATWG was created specifically because W3C wasn’t really listening to web authors though.
I don’t think there are a lot of scenarios where standards aren’t driven by implementers, though. USB, DRAM, WiFi, all this stuff is defined by implementers.
> WHATWG was created specifically because W3C wasn’t really listening to web authors though.
Rather: WHATWG was founded because the companies developing browsers (in particular Google) believed that what the W3C was working on for XHTML 2.0 was too academic, and went into a different direction than their (i.e. in particular Google's) vision for the web.
Ask users what they want and they say "faster horses," not cars.
Users are a key information source but they don't know how to build a web engine, they don't know networks, and they don't know security; and therefore can't dictate the feature set.
And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.
Honestly, what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform. I really think anyone who has any sort of confusion about what I commented here to take a long, hard look at their worldview.
> And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.
Is your proposal essentially that Mozilla defines web standards Google is legally bound to implement them?
> what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion
Not horrified, but asking what the alternative is. I don’t think you’ve actually got a sensible proposal.
Cooperation in the WHATWG is voluntary. Even if there were some workable proposal for how to drive web standards without Google having any decision making power, they could (and presumably would) decline to participate in any structure that mandated what they have to build in Chrome. Absent legal force, no one can make Google cede their investment in web standards.
We have the legal force to do this. Google has already been determined to be abusing their illegal monopoly they have with Chrome. The penalty phase is ongoing, but consider that even forcing Google to sell Chrome was originally considered as a possible penalty.
Requiring Google implement the standards as agreed by Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft is not remotely outside the realm of the legal force that could be applied.
>what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform
They don't. In general browser specs are defined via various standards groups like WHATWG. As far as I know there is no standard for what image formats must be supported on a web browser,[0] which is why in this one case any browser can decide to support an image format or not.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
The other key browser implementers are also part of WHATWG.
Who do you suppose should be in charge of web standards? I can’t imagine the train wreck of incompetence if standards were driven by bureaucrats instead of stakeholders.