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Think of it this way. Did the Web Browser need to be a proprietary closed protocol in order for the massive improvement over Gopher/WAIS or other end user hyper

Think of it this way. Did the Web Browser need to be a proprietary closed protocol in order for the massive improvement over Gopher/WAIS or other end user hypertext information systems back then? No, Netscape/Mozilla didn't need to "own" HTTP and HTML completely, and turn the Web into a giant App Store in order to innovate in the Browser client, neither did Google, Apple, or MS. At various points, proprietary extensions were tried, and either failed, or got standardized when they became popular or proven their need. All Praise to Slack's UI, I love all the flourishes, like auto-detection of paste of code bits and offering to create snippets. I get it, I really do. I just don't think we need another messaging platform owned by a single company.

sly010 11y ago
Actually, many features of the modern web (DOM, XmlHttpRequest, box-sizing: border-box) were implemented by IE first. Unfortunately it's not in the best interest of anyone capable of engineering open/distributed platforms to actually do so. Why would they? It's way easier and more profitable to create something on your own terms, something you can control. I would risk that it's better for the customer. People are flocking from WordPress to SquareSpace, from self hosted SMTP servers to Google, from private hosting to cloud hosting. Is this a good thing in the long term? I don't think so either, but doing it any other way would be heroism and we are short on heroes.
vincentleeuwen 11y ago
I agree, but you can't blame them for trying to stretch their monopoly imo