Sure. And they did say those things. And the sites that genuinely cared about user needs, both past and present? They did the 'inefficient' thing. They optimize

Sure. And they did say those things. And the sites that genuinely cared about user needs, both past and present? They did the 'inefficient' thing. They optimized for whatever was best-of-breed at the time (IE, FBConnect) for ease of use, then found a way to also cater to whatever came up next. Many headaches were caused by IE/Firefox incompatibility, but Firefox is still gaining marketshare today.