Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don’t use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I’d left off in Chrome. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It means a standard that changes in a bottom-up way, usually defined by a reference implementation… instead of by organizing worldwide trips to have meetings, workgroups, and committees, who define whatever they pull out of thin air, then expect developers to implement by pointing to a multi-thousand page PDF that nobody knows if it’s possible to implement, much less in an efficient way.