Hostile actions would be IE’s strategy for monopolizing browser in 90s and Google paying Apple and Mozilla to monopolize search starting in 2004, killing off Reader in 2013.

Taking over standards groups is a gray area with tradeoffs. It helped Google preserve monopoly in search but clearly devs and the web benefited as well.

XHTML2 was panned because it was super strict without clear benefits. Keeping HTML backwards compatible is clearly a very good thing. I don’t fully understand the author’s passion for XSLT- it’s cumbersome and it wasn’t popular with devs.

I agree with the headline and some aspects but XML is a bad hill to die on and much of the writing is hyperbolic and more than a little out of touch.