[guelo]

I am a fan of Joe Hewitt but this is crazy talk, especially coming from one of the heroes of the Mozilla revolution. It's as if he doesn't remember those dark days long ago when he was working on Firefox in what seemed like a lost cause, Microsoft was the defacto standard setter and single-handedly drove innovation in the web, it was awful. We must never go back to those days. I know Joe imagines some benevolent dictator or consortium, but it's just too risky. There's too much power in controlling the web and power corrupts. Look at what's happened to ICANN with the power they've been given. No, we must keep the power spread out, preferably we'd have more browser makers not fewer. The slow pace might be frustrating to the innovators on the cutting edge like Joe, but it's the only way.

[joehewitt]

Exactly the kind of arrogance I cited. You don't want to risk a bad owner so you'll let the whole thing die from neglect by committee. I would rather have Microsoft be the only browser vendor than have the web shrink dramatically.

[philikon]

Because when Microsoft was the only browser vendor, the web evolved really quickly... OWAIT

[randomdata]

But was the browser monoculture to blame?

The web went through a painful stale period from about 2000 to 2005, during which time IE asserted near total dominance. However, sites are just now starting to phase out IE6 support. That means that the technology that has advanced the web over the past five or so years was there all along.

Interest in the web started to return around the same time Firefox started to gain in fanfare, but why? Was Firefox to thank? Those "Web 2.0" apps could have just as easily been developed in IE6 in 2001. It wasn't the technology that Firefox brought that made the difference.

[yuhong]

>However, sites are just now starting to phase out IE6 support.

All this proves is that the IE6 monoculture had such an effect that it took a long time for the effects to disappear. But yes IE4 and particularly IE5.x introduced a lot of new stuff that did not become well known until years later, like the infamous XMLHTTPRequest.

[drivebyacct2]

Even if you don't want to blame generic "browser monoculture", I see no problem in blaming the stagnation of "the web" on Internet Explorer. They had no interest in pushing the web forward, they had no innovative ideas for how web technologies could or would evolve. Shit, IE6 barely satisfied any reasonable expectations of a web browser from a "web specs" perspective. Chrome and Mozilla have pushed IE to become better and in the meantime, they are investing in new technologies CSS3, WebGl, Web Workers, Web Intents, Server Sent Events, (I shouldn't mention it, but) NaCl, etc. These are all initiatives started by Google and Mozilla to make the web a richer platform. Those probably wouldn't happen in a "browser monoculture" and they certainly wouldn't happen in an "IE only culture".

[joehewitt]

I clearly stated you need more than just a single owner, you need a single owner that is competent and cares. We can't just snap our fingers and have that, but I'm hoping to at least help people to start thinking about it.

[akie]

So you want to have a benevolent dictator, basically. If you look at actual dictators ('single owners') and the ratio between "benevolent" and "not-benevolent" you'd see that those are pretty rare. Singapore had one. Steve Jobs was one. But usually, I guess, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[wf]

I have very little real-world development experience so know these questions are relatively innocent: If there is one browser vendor do they not also control what is the cutting edge of technology? Wouldn't you be completely limited by them? Specifically, could you really imagine Microsoft setting the standards for the experience you have day to day on the web?

[dangoor]

Who needs to imagine? That's how it was a decade ago.

[wf]

Well, I'm only 22 and we didn't even have a computer until I was around 12, so my experience with web standards is relatively naive. I <3 the internet as it is today, and I at least, do have to imagine how atrocious it must have been with Microsoft setting the standard.

[tlianza]

This is a good reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_explorer#OS_compatibil...

IE 4.0 was a revelation and IE 5.0 was fantastic as well - effectively it was death knell for Netscape and all competition (earned MS a monopoly suit, but in truth it was a vastly superior browser to anything out there).

They won the browser war. Then, check out the time difference between IE6 and IE7. 5 years. That's where innovation goes absent credible competition.

[rbranson]

dangoor is absolutely right. Microsoft probably put us behind 5-6 real years of progress on the web.

[dreamdu5t]

Your argument pretty much hinges on the assertion that Microsoft innovates more than others on the web, which is not something everyone agrees with.