Building a browser for the modern standards-based web is effectively impossible, because it costs too much, takes too long, and requires a standing army to keep up with.
We are at an impasse. The standards cannot be deprecated because they are used all over the web, and because they are used all over the web a new browser maker has little choice except forking chromium or firefox. Even microsoft couldn’t afford to keep adding all the standards to their browser engine. Normally the solution for a messy overgrown implementation is a grand reboot. But we can’t do a grand reboot of the web because we cannot get rid of the legacy. The only viable strategy I see to have real browser engine diversity without giving up on compatibility is moving as much of the standards implementation as possible into JS modules, so new browser makers can start with a small engine that loads the publicly hosted standards modules.
what exactly is the benefit of having a byzantine set of standards in the first place? Like why not just have a standard and not dick around with it?
If there are things browsers can't do natively, then someone will build their own way to do it and then you end up with non-standard implementations.
It's better to get everyone on the same page and develop an open standard.
Adobe / Macromedia started from the designer perspective but Flash soon became a goal of its own because Adobe wouldn't give up that marketshare.
Only now all parties realise it's too big for one company to own. Well except Google perhaps.
Users and website creators wanted these features and Flash was the way to do them.
Sure, other technologies like Microsoft's Silverlight allowed similar things, but Flash was so widely used it could be relied on to offer these features.
Even now things like clipboard access aren't supported in the same way across all of the major browsers.