This makes no sense because it ignores the reality that unlike KHTML, or WebKit, the vast majority of browsers were not based on those rendering engines. There

This makes no sense because it ignores the reality that unlike KHTML, or WebKit, the vast majority of browsers were not based on those rendering engines. There was never a time where a web app developer saw your browser was not Webkit or KHTML based and told you to upgrade to them on every platform. There was never a time where KHTML or Webkit completely dominated browser share. There was also a much wider array of browser engines at the time (MS had 2, Opera had 1, Firefox had much higher market share than it does today). So KHTML/Webkit hardly had control over the web the way Chromium might because they never had the market share Chromium did, and further, they were never the dominant engine embedded in nearly every browser the way Chromium/Blink are now.