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by sangnoir 3310 days ago
> Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard

Google has been doing this for a long time, I doubt it's unintentional. If there is functionality that they want which is not standardized, they go ahead and implement it. When a workable standard is ready or detailed enough, they switch over to it. The earliest instance of this that I can recall was Google Gears, which was deprecated by LocalStorage. There probably are earlier examples.
2 comments
roca 3310 days ago
Sure but the asm.js/Wasm approach was always an option. They didn't have to go down the path they did.
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sangnoir 3309 days ago
NaCl predates asm.js/Wasm by 2 years: it wasn't always an option

Here's a timeline:

  2011-10-16: Native client released
  2013-03-21: asm.js released
  2013-06-25: Firefox 22 released with asm.js support
  2013-07-17: Chrome 28 released with optimizations for asm.js
  2015-06-17: WebAssembly released
  2017-06-30: Google announces switch to Wasm.
When do you think was a Good time for Google to switch tracks?
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johncolanduoni 3309 days ago
Was it an obvious option? I don't think I'd give the asm.js and WebAssembly developers so little credit.
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roca 3309 days ago
Mozilla people and Google people talked to each other long before those releases.
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a3_nm 3310 days ago
> If there is functionality that they want which is not standardized, they go ahead and implement it.

... in a non-standardizable way.

Why not try to help create a standard instead? What's the benefit of starting with a dirty approach and deprecating it later?

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indy 3309 days ago
It's best to have couple of working/competing implementations first before defining a standard.
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sangnoir 3309 days ago
> Why not try to help create a standard instead?

They do that as well, it's not one or the other. Google had employees working on WebAssembly (along with Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft). Standards take time to be developed and finalized.

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roca 3309 days ago
Google had a lot of people working on NaCl and PNaCl for a long time before they started working on WebAssembly.
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sangnoir 3309 days ago
> Google had a lot of people working on NaCl and PNaCl for a long time before they started working on WebAssembly

That's probably because NaCl(2011) and PNaCl predate WebAssembly (announced 2015). Google was optimizing Chrome for asm.js as far back as Chrome 28 (July 2013) - less than 5 months after asm.js was announced.

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hawski 3309 days ago
Because people prefer something broken now then something good later.
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