[WA]

No. Browser vendors implement specs, defined by the W3C. To quote the W3C‘s tagline:

> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web based on the principles of accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security.

Web Components are a standard to be used by web devs.

[tannhaeuser]

FYI: the last time W3C, Inc. endorsed a WHATWG HTML snapshot as a recommendation was in 2021 ([1]), for the WHATWG snapshot published January, 2020 whereas the 2021 and 2022 snapshots were rejected, with no new review process having started since.

Reasons for rejection include a reporting API seen as privacy-invading and related disagreement over whether W3C's HTML WG could augment/redact WHATWG spec text like they used to be doing until 2017 when the previous HTML recommendation was published, or has to go through WHATWG process for any change according to the W3C/WHATWG "memorandum of understanding" which thus hasn't resulted in common understanding after all ;) Another reason was objection against the so-called HTML5 outlining algorithm, which Steve Faulkner actually has gone to great lenghts removing in WHATWG HTML upstream (cf. [2] for details).

Unfortunately, the removal also brought incompatible change to HTML (the content model of hgroup, among other incompatibilities), rendering existing content invalid, which WHATWG set out not to be doing but which they lack the methodology of preventing and for which the spec derived from Ian Hickson's work frankly lacks formal qualities to support. Even more unfortunate is that this change has already spilled to derived standards such as EPUB3 which hence makes existing EPUB3 content using compound headings going back to 2011 invalid, and EPUB3 writers lacking a tool for actually verifying what readers can support (epubcheck was blindly updated without consideration for the installed base). Technically, Review Draft January 2022 and newer should then already be called HTML 6. Since nobody gives a rat's ass (including W3C, Inc.'s dormant HTML WG) anyway, and gross misconceptions about HTML specs prevail, like in your post, I'm not sure whether we should call it a day with WHATWG/W3C's HTML specs already.

[1]: https://www.w3.org/blog/2021/whatwg-review-drafts-of-html-an...

[2]: https://sgmljs.net/blog/blog2303.html

[kabes]

And who defines the W3C specs? Browser vendors! And if they don't agree with the non browser vendors within W3C, they create another standard org (WHATWG).

[lloydatkinson]

Anyone not under a rock knows W3C simply copies whatever WHATWG come up with and then stamp W3C on it.

[pests]

Kind of the point. WHATWG is descriptive not prescriptive. It describes things as they are. W3C is a standards body, sometimes they use the existing solutions and standardize them.