To be clear, initially HTML was defined by the W3C. Then when they tried to replace HTML with XML and the browser vendors revolted, the W3C essentially lost co

To be clear, initially HTML was defined by the W3C. Then when they tried to replace HTML with XML and the browser vendors revolted, the W3C essentially lost control over this. Basically the W3C over-played it's hand. It thought by re-writing standards from HTML to XML it could force Apple/Opera/Mozilla to re-write. In the end, the browser vendors got together and created a new body that would be responsible for HTML. They've skirmished for control, but there's no question WHATWG and browser vendors are in ascendency. From 2007-2019 they both had competing standards of HTML, but since the browser vendors were on WHATWG they would just implement their own version making it the de-facto standard. So, in 2019 W3C announced they'd just use the WHATWG HTML.[0] I expect if the W3C pushes anything the vendors consider too arduous (eg a re-write of CSS into constraints), then WHATWG would create a CSS working group and the process would repeat. This reminds me a lot of the power of the Supreme Court, specifically President Johnson's quote about it when they made a ruling he didn't like. "[The Chief Justice on the court] has made his decision; now let him enforce it"[1] The stakeholders of WHATWG have an army (of browser coders), whereas W3C needs to rule by consent of the ruled like the Supreme Court does. ---- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia#Enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia#Enforceme...