When a standard is ubiquitous enough, there's little incentive for anyone to try and best it, since the momentum of the installed base is too great. Unfortunately, the Internet industry works in the opposite direction. Because Internet time moves so quickly, it's normal for the cart to precede the horse. Instead of building a browser to match the Dynamic HTML standard, browser makers are inventing the standard as they build the browser . I meant standards.
Installed base equals de facto standard.
Design by free market may be faster and more efficient than design by committee, but it has some pretty annoying ramifications, too. Worse, it ends up costing the public money and resources. Take the 56K modem industry . Problem is, their proposals are so far removed as to be almost completely incompatible. That means designers have to spend countless hours cross-designing pages to work in both browsers.