It's honestly good for this to get a lot of attention though, I'm happy to see additional commentary on it getting shared.
I'd be curious to know how or if Chrome actually manages the PR around their work. Chrome lead fired off a blog post So you don't like a web proposal which effectively says it's purely a technical decision, and that only constructive technical criticism is regarded at all. >>36818409 https://blog.yoav.ws/posts/web_platform_change_you_do_not_li...
But I don't feel like Google has the luxury of letting it's image burn like this. TURTLEDOVE is already a huge semi-sound but immensely scary change, MV3 is a disaster of high order and hasn't responded with anything but a stream of bandaids to challenges like Mozilla's far more capable Background Pages proposals. But I think the reputation damage here is vastly higher, as there's basically nothing being offered here to most users, or, if this spec goes through, ex-Web users. This effort is just an abominable horror show, and at some point, it feels like Google/Chrome have to stop being so blinders-on as to treat this as a merely technical discussion.
The last time these debates went down, where there was an incredibly contentious spec that got shipped, it basically took the Web creator Tim Berners-Lee using his w3c authority to stamp "ship it" on the spec. https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/01/tim-berners-lee-endorses...
As if something with multiple downstream non-technical effects, is only a technical change
As if you can minimize and dismiss everyone’s fears and concerns as hollow, invalid and irrelevant by waving the magic wand of tis only a wee technical change, to be sure, to be sure
As if everyone’s protests and arguments against can be instantly hosed down, because aye, you guessed it laddie, it’s only a technical change
It’s almost as if the folks at Google think people are so stupid that not only do people not know what they’re talking about, but they’ll actually believe the lie and fall for that deception…
It’s almost as if Google was trying to gaslight the public about this…
If they end up groveling about this, I don’t think “in retrospect, we could have communicated this better” is going to cut it. This is a company the size, scope and sophistication of Google. This is not their first rodeo. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they mean to do it…