The result: there is now effectively one dominating web browser run by an ad company who nigh unto controls the spec for the web itself and who is finally putting its foot down to decide that we are all going to be forced to either used fully-locked down devices or to prove that we are using some locked-down component of our otherwise unlocked device to see anyone's content, and they get to frame it as fighting for the user in the spec draft as users have a "need" to prove their authenticity to websites to get their free stuff.
(BTW, Brave is in the same boat: they are also an ad company--despite building ad blocking stuff themselves--and their product managers routinely discuss and even quote Brendan Eich talking about this same kind of "run the browser inside of trusted computing" as their long-term solution for preventing people blocking their ads. The vicious irony: the very tech they want to use to protect them is what will be used to protect the status quo from them! The entire premise of monetizing with ads is eventually either self-defeating or the problem itself.)
Interesting that fixing "how to center a div" is considered harmful, but WebSerialPort is actually very good?
> The result: there is now effectively one dominating web browser run by an ad company who nigh unto controls the spec for the web itself
I don't think this this reality. Google proposes a bunch of APIs that goes nowhere because the other browser vendors consider them harmful. Google's previous attempts at trying to drive more adtech into the browser have failed due to a lack of support from other browser vendors.
I think "who drives the web specs" is probably in the best situation possible. It's largely Google, Mozilla, and Apple who all have slightly different interests in what makes a good web platform, and the web ends up better for it.
It is certainly "interesting", but "true" nonetheless: one determined person--think Fabrice Ballard if you want an example--is in a great position to throw together a web browser and even implement ALL of the crazy API wrapper specs, but when if they aren't you simply don't need most of them to browse any given website.
But, as it stands, my only a-few-year-old copy of Safari can barely even browse the web anymore as it is missing some new corner case of CSS or web components or whatever and I just get blank screens a lot; the result: people have burned years of large teams into trying to maintain implementations of HTML/CSS and have given up.
The web should really just be a handful of really core specs for getting platform access--which of course have innovated over the years so you'd have all of canvas, WebGL 1/2, and WebGPU, which would take SOME effort but isn't like, INSANE--and then all of the layout should be done end-to-end in libraries.
The world NEEDED to be like this to prevent us from ending up with only a handful of web browsers that can only be maintained by giant companies: it needs to be sufficiently easy to build a web browser that we would end up with a ton of small implementations that would be difficult to move as a unit, forcing progressive enhancement as a permanent norm.