[freebreakfast]

AMP is a concern, but I am more concerned about HTML.

Google holds a large amount of sway over HTML's direction. This is derived from the fact that WHATWG is the standards body for HTML. (W3C is just a rubber stamp per the agreement between the two last year.) And this group is directed by four companies--Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

The power balance in this relationship heavily favors Google. It controls the purse of Mozilla. Microsoft's browser is based on Chromium. And Chrome already owns the majority of the market.

What Google wants from HTML, Google can get. Even if there is push back from others, they only need to release "beta" versions of their changes for the standard, wait for developers to take advantage of them, and then reintroduce the suggestions. At that point, Apple and the others will have little resource.

Google is simply too powerful and a threat to the open Web.

[vulcan01]

One partial solution is to get Microsoft off the WHATWG, because they also use Chromium.

Perhaps instead of looking at which companies release browsers, they should just start putting the Chromium, WebKit, and Gecko teams there.

[WorldMaker]

Microsoft isn't just rubber stamping Google's initiatives because they are using Chromium and have been shown to have different priorities, though. More seats at the table is obviously a good thing, but removing Microsoft from a seat at the table at the same time won't help and might make things worse.