In addition to the other answers, NPAPI only standardizes the interface between a plugin and the browser. It doesn't standardize the interface between the plugi

In addition to the other answers, NPAPI only standardizes the interface between a plugin and the browser. It doesn't standardize the interface between the plugin and the outside world. Want the clipboard? Call the native platform API to get at the clipboard. Want local storage? Call the native platform API to read and write files. Want to make HTTP requests? Link libcurl. This means that, apart from the (serious) security concerns, none of the behavior is standardized or manageable. How do you apply proxy configuration to a plugin that's bringing its own copy of libcurl? How do you report how much storage a plugin has used? It's also a huge pain for people on less-popular OSes, because each plugin needs to be individually ported, even though the browser already has figured all these things out for its own use. So, no, this isn't reinventing NPAPI. It's doing a whole lot of things that NPAPI didn't have answers for. (Note that the headline is incorrect; the article clearly states they're talking about extensions, not plugins.)