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Comment by callahad | Hacker News Reader

Kind of like when Google decided to ship a partial Shadow DOM polyfill to production that just so happened to make YouTube load 5x slower in browsers that weren't Chrome. https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185

Polyfills aren't a panacea, and we shouldn't blindly excuse anti-competitive behavior or attempts to monopolize the direction of an otherwise open platform that we all share and depend on.

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It is a bit funny though. Our problem used to be "OMG there are so many browsers with their own little gotchas, and they don't follow the spec"

Now the problem is "Oh no we're converging to a single implementation, we need to diversify it!"

I don't know which is better but it is kind of funny to note.

We've actually gone full circle twice now, with a little mobius strip thrown in for good measure.

1. Early IE and netscape era: OMG there are so many browsers

2. IE6 dominance: Oh no we're converging to a single implementation... [and they don't follow the spec]

3. Rise of Firefox and Chrome: "OMG there are so many browsers

4. Chrome dominance: Oh no we're converging to a single implementation... [and they dominate the spec]

IE6's problem wasn't that it did or did not follow some spec. It was that it was never going to change. IT won and MS where never going to make another one, because they wanted the internet dead.

We do not have that problem with Chrome.

MS wanted the internet captive to protect their cash cows, Google wants the internet captive to protect their cash cows.

The core problem remains the same.

No it's a different problem, you're too reductionist, cries about IE6 are a distraction from that.

Should the only browser be from one company? No.

Was IE6s problem that it was from one company? No.

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