Any technical reason they might offer (sparse array performance) is just facetious. They have the technical know-how to solve such problems, but business wise i

Any technical reason they might offer (sparse array performance) is just facetious. They have the technical know-how to solve such problems, but business wise it makes little sense. Indeed. They cared about open standards when Microsoft was still dominating and the new categories were in their infancy. Later, they cared because Apple dominated smart phones and tables for some years. But now that Android has an ~85% worldwide marketshare, Google Mail is probably the most popular e-mail provider, and Chrome made serious inroads on the desktop, they feel confident enough to slowly start ignoring standards to lock other browsers and ecosystems out. Of course, the historical difference compared to Microsofts rise is that hackers always had contempt for Microsoft, while Google is loved in large contingents.