> They were able to throw up IndexedDB support in a jiffy, but because something that actually works on nearly all platforms (including mobile!) happens to be Chrome's (??) that is a reason to hold back?
No, because the proposed spec did not actually specify the behavior in a way that was independently implementatble.
The spec did not specify the supported query language, either by simple reference to a specific version of the SQL standard (which would be problematic, because a complete and correct implementation of any, at least recent, version of the SQL standard is rare, and probably inappropriate for the use case), or by more complex reference-with-identified-exceptions, or by just listing out the supported features and expected behavior.
It was, therefore, not possible even in principle to have mutually-compatible, independent implementations (and all of the existing implementations just did "link to some version of SQlite and do whatever it does".)
> Sqlite has been around for almost 15 years now. It's time to adopt it as a standard.
Its a good, widely used, tool -- and one that is rapidly changing. But the whole point of web standards is to specify behavior in a way which permits mutually compatible, independent implementations. And WebSQLDB didn't do that, and didn't really seem to be progressing toward doing that.
> What's even more confusing is that Mozilla is actually listed on the Sqlite.org webpage as a sponsor, but they refuse to land it in Firefox.
SQlite is -- or has been, at least, not sure if it still is -- used in Firefox. What they haven't included in Firefox is a WebSQL database implementation, because they believe -- and rightly so -- that WebSQL database wasn't appropriate as a web standard, and didn't show any sign of heading toward something that would be appropriate as such a standard.