[EdSharkey]

I always thought some browser vendors who own mobile app stores wouldn't appreciate gamers having access to a distribution channel for great games on their platform that they didn't control. You can't have great games without great sound, so their mucking up the Sound API would be a nice way to stall the emergence.

It's a conspiracy theory, I know. Reality is probably far more boring and depressing. :/

Like the blog poster, I cut my teeth on the Mozilla API, and I was able to get passable sound out of a OPL3 emulator in a week's time. Perhaps Mozilla could convince other browser vendors to adopt their API in addition to Web Audio API?

[andrewguenther]

My theory is that Google used it's influence to hinder the API so they could work around the problems with Android's audio stack. They pushed for an API they knew they could get to work on Chrome for Android, rather than fixing Android (which is supposedly improved in 8.0).

[roca]

I doubt that theory. Chris Rogers @ Google drove the Web Audio API design, and he was recently ex Apple's Core Audio team, and probably neither knew nor cared about Android. More history: http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/09/some-opinions-on-history...

[mort96]

Some person working at Google didn't know or care about Android? It doesn't seem all too unlikely that while he personally didn't care, his corporate overlords told him to work within the constraints of Android.

[roca]

Chris Rogers started implementing his API in 2009, about three years before Chrome for Android was first released.

And do you seriously think in 2009 some corporate overlord said to Chris Rogers, "Android is going to be big, and so is Chrome for Android, but we've decided Android will have a crappy audio stack for several years, so you need to design around that"?

[mort96]

I didn't know it was in 2009. I don't think it would've been too unlikely if he started it in, say, 2014.

[fzzzy]

I think having a simple api in addition to the Web Audio API is a great idea. I have no idea what the chances of that happening are though.

[sitkack]

Same thing applies to WebGL on iOS. Until you get someone to leak a damning document ... but theory is sound.