> What makes the web great is its constant change and innovation. How is it that a 2 person startup can deal with it's users changing browsers whenever they want, but a giant corporation can't?

That two-person startup consists of two hackers who eat, sleep, and fucking breathe Web technologies. They have bookmarklets for six different sets of Web documentation, and they can quote chapter and verse from any of them. They work 18-hour days because they love their job.

The giant corporation's line-of-business app team consists of an IT guy, an accountant who owns a couple of dogeared books on JavaScript, and maybe a couple of contractors. They work 8-hour days, only half of which is actually devoted to the application they're working on, and they don't care about standards as long as they can finish writing that Web app and get back to their actual job.

I'm certainly exaggerating a bit, but the reason is because that giant corporation's business is almost certainly not writing Web apps for a living.