> "The W3C standards process is neutered at best, and corrupt at worst." Bear in mind the W3C hasn't been driving standards for many years. The WHATWG has bee

> "The W3C standards process is neutered at best, and corrupt at worst." Bear in mind the W3C hasn't been driving standards for many years. The WHATWG has been effectively in charge of steering that process. They're made up of all large browser vendors, which is why they had the effective power to do this. While Google is a key player in the WHATWG, they're definitely not the only ones proposing and testing new features. Both Apple and Mozilla also test new APIs. Mozilla is the most reserved, but Apple hasn't been shy about testing new features either. It's why we have prefers-color-scheme now. > "They can trial and enforce FLoC, Manifest v3, and other changes that take away user control." I don't see how FLoC takes away user control, personally. It should be trivial to opt out of a cohort if you wish. It's an over-engineered solution but it's one that strikes a compromise between ad networks and users' privacy concerns. Why should we compromise at all, you ask? Because millions of small businesses rely on ads to stay afloat. Decimating the ad networks overnight will have far more casualties than Google's coffers. We need to transition the ad ecosystem to one that's privacy-conscious. Manifest v3 is a massive API change so you'll need to be more specific there. If you're referring to their content blocking API, it's essentially a more powerful version of Safari's content blocker. They've addressed most of the criticisms people had early on (eg. dynamic rules, header blocking). They're switching to a declarative model to prevent malicious extensions from tracking users. > "Most webby runtimes like Electron, and most third party browsers, will also embed some variant of Blink these days. This leads to browser engine monoculture, and is capital-B Bad." I agree that monoculture is bad, but it's a product of their own success. Blink and V8 are more portable than Gecko or even Trident, and that allows them to be embedded in applications like Electron. Servo would have been Mozilla's answer to this, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards now. > "The effort needed to build a new, compatible browser engine is more akin to building something like Wine[0] from scratch." I agree. Personally I'd like to see certain APIs (like IndexedDB) deprecated to reduce that complexity, but the web has a strong focus on preserving backwards compatibility. > "What changed now, all of a sudden?" I can only speculate, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a legal concern. ie. these users are using our services but haven't agreed to our terms of use.