> Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support.

Google learned it can be "standards compliant" if it submits a draft spec to WHATWG/W3C, and while the comment and revision process is still ongoing, roll out those features in Chrome and start using them in YouTube, Gmail, Google docs, and AMP. Now Firefox and Safari are forced to implement those draft specs as well or users will leave in droves because Google websites are broken. Soon enough, Google's draft spec is standardized with minimal revisions because it's already out there in the wild.

The debate, revision, and multistakeholder aspects of the standards process have been effectively bypassed, a la IE6 and ActiveX, but Chrome can claim to be on the cutting edge of standards compliance. This is a case of Goodharts's law.

▲

anang 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't mean this to doubt you, it is a sincere question. Do you have any examples of that happening? It sounds very believable, but it would be great to have actual sources for future reference.

▲

dijit 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

push notifications, webgpu and webusb are examples of chrome being a reference implementation and using things for their services while simultaneously pushing the standard.

Push for mail, webgpu for maps (iirc) and I believe WebUSB is used for Android flash/debug.

▲

mistercow 2 hours ago | parent [-]

WebGPU is the only one of those I’ve really followed, but hasn’t that had a huge amount of input and changes due to other voices in the working group? That seems to contradict the simplistic picture painted above of Google just dictating standards to the industry.

▲

dijit 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Would webgpu exist at all if Chrome hadn’t just pushed through with an implementation?

Who knows.

Not us, we’ll never know.

	▲	pjmlp an hour ago \| parent [-]
		To add insult to injury, we probably would have gotten WebGL 2.0 Compute, which was initially done by Intel, if Chrome had not refused to ship it on Chrome, arguing that WebGPU was right around the corner, and it would take too much space, this was about 5 years ago. And to those rushing out to point out the excuse part about OpenGL on Mac not having support for compute, WebGL already back then wasn't backed up by OpenGL on all platforms, see Windows (DirectX), PlayStation (LibGNM). Also eventually Safari also moved their WebGL implementation from OpenGL to Metal, and Chrome did as well, replace their WebGL to run on top of Metal on Mac. So not really that much of a problem regarding the state of OpenGL on Mac as "required" implemenatation layer for WebGL.

▲

rdsubhas an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

QUIC. HTTP/3. WebP. And more in this comment thread.

▲

troupo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anytime you see someone on HN lamenting that Safari is the new IE because it doesn't implement something, 99.9% of the time it's Chrome-only non-standards.

- All of hardware standards. WebHID's timeline is especially egregious https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#is...

- Most of standards advertised on web.dev as "new exciting opportunities you can try now". E.g. WebTransport https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/webt.... The status of that spec is "scribbled on a napkin", but somehow already released in Chrome.

- Other "standards" and "specs" here and there like web share target https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/

Can I Use had to create a special UNOFF tag for all the web APIs that Chrome (mostly Chrome) ships. If you go to MDN and look at all APIs marked as "experimental", you'll find that most of them are already shipped in Chrome: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API

▲

krageon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It happens every single time. This isn't some well kept industry secret

▲

neves an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Any serious antitrust process would break it in a separate company.