Excuse my ignorance, but what browser-based non-JS VM was introduced successfully? You mentioned this was done before, and I assume you mean it was done successfully, so just curious to know which one it is?
> True, but the JS VMs we have today have been refined over 15+ years and switching to another risks breaking the web in profound ways.
The counter-point being that all the major browser vendors have swapped out their VM or performed significant rewrites in the past few years; it's clear that it's possible to implement a new VM and not "break the web in profound ways".
Arguing that you can replace a JS VM with a JS VM doesn't help the case of replacing a JS VM with a non-JS VM.
However, the nature of the replacement VM doesn't really matter in the context of what we're describing here.
The problems of compatibility remain the same regardless of whether the target VM is a JS-specific VM, or a general purpose VM; reliance on undefined behavior, accidental changes in semantics, optimization bugs, and so on.
If browser makers were able to swap-out the VM, they've already demonstrated the ability to solve the exact same kind of compatibility problems they'd face here.
Or, shorthand, a general purpose browser VM.
Unless, of course, you're arguing that the above is not truly possible, in which case I'd argue that's exactly what Google is exploring via PNaCL, and has (if not completely efficiently) been implemented across existing VMs. The PNaCL choice of LLVM bitcode was likely in error, but regardless, "no such thing" is a stretch.