This is not remotely the case. W3C used to be the reference, up until when they obstinately championed XHTML 2.0 that nobody wanted to write. Meanwhile, browser

This is not remotely the case. W3C used to be the reference, up until when they obstinately championed XHTML 2.0 that nobody wanted to write. Meanwhile, browser vendors wanted to implement all the fun stuff that web apps need but were being blocked by the W3C's glacial speed. So they just founded the WHATWG for collaboration and standardization, and since then W3C has beed ripping off the WHATWG's standards but always with inexplicable alterations.