A great comment to refer to the next time some young coder that never lived through IE6 says it's great to have one single engine everywhere.
OP is suggesting that Chrome should have spearheaded a spec that no one but Intel and Google ever showed any interest in. How would that not have been literally "they like a standard (or propose one), they implement it, use it on their projects like google doc, and let the competition deal with the mess"[1]?
Instead they're implementing a spec with broad involvement and support across browsers, it's just taking longer. Seems like exactly how we'd want things to go.
Yes. Exactly what they've been doing with plenty of other "standards"
Also, none of specific reasons people opposed Microsoft’s policies with IE, like it’s attempts to lock people into windows-only APIs (ActiveX etc) apply today.
In this case, google can pull off something like OP says because it's dominating the market.
> Also, none of specific reasons people opposed Microsoft’s policies with IE, like it’s attempts to lock people into windows-only APIs (ActiveX etc) apply today.
Chrome implements plenty of chrome only API. They like a standard (or propose one), they implement it, use it on their projects like google doc, and let the competition deal with the mess.
This is nothing like the situation was with IE6. Back then basic functionality was half-broken and it was hard to get anything done without a pile of hacks.
Causes are not 1 to 1, but consequences are the same: monopoly leads to abuse, abuse lead to some site not working with Firefox, consommers needs being ignored by google and them abusing their dominant position to pass what they want as standard, or just destroy API they don't like (see the latest adblock scandal).