[specialist]

I wouldn't down-vote your comment.

During my interview with that team, one of the kids proudly took credit for the span tag. A weekend hack. Committed the code and shipped it. No review. SOP.

Being more standards-minded at the time, I wanted to throttle the kid.

With the benefit of hindsight, I see that all the jitter and experimentation was pretty much ideal. If a feature proves useful, other browsers may adopt it, and it may become a de facto standard.

[cheatercheater]

And if it didn't, it still stayed in and caused one of a thousand incompatibilities used by masses of clueless people around the world.