But ActiveX didn't die because of competition, it died because it was terrible. The same fate happened to java applets. There was no real mainstream momentum fo

But ActiveX didn't die because of competition, it died because it was terrible. The same fate happened to java applets. There was no real mainstream momentum for either. For sure things would have been different if Microsoft had really tried to exploit their monopoly. But they just left it there as if waiting for the competition to catch up and surpass. Flash could have been it, not that flash was much better but at least you could read text without it. It could be that anything would be made to suck. But it doesn't really follow that money means tracking to this extent and come with such poor user experience. With trillions of dollars on the line we make it so slow it is barely usable. Oftentimes there are many layers of popups and checkboxes just to get at the content. And somehow that is worth it? The incentives are insane. Tragedy of the commons is putting it kindly. Dark patterns are at an all time high. The techniques in the nineties used by criminals to trick you into running that attached executable in outlook express are now finessed by the largest corporations to trick you into allowing them to track you even more. On top of that the monoculture situation is pretty terrifying. I wouldn't bet on humanity not being able to make it worse but it is hard to accept the state that we are in.