Creating new browsers doesn't bother me at all. I think the appropriate analogy is something closer to changing the spelling of a language's keywords arbitraril

Creating new browsers doesn't bother me at all. I think the appropriate analogy is something closer to changing the spelling of a language's keywords arbitrarily. Change for the sake of change, which is easy enough to adjust to, but introduces a transition period that costs time, for no good reason. The backward compatibility effects aren't quite as bad in the browser context... except when the plugin API is affected.