> May I ask what new standards Google dictates, and under what authority?
As an Ontario resident, you should know all too well that we measure in inches, write on letter-sized paper, use Phillips screws, and change our clocks twice a year not because the US has any authority over Canada or that they're superior systems (they're all objectively terrible), but because they're tenfold our size. It's simple economics that if we want to trade with them we need to speak their language. It's also why we have to bank with outdated, insecure technology. You may remember the W3C tried to reset web standards back in 2002 to fix all the issues. Developers and browsers said “We're not rewriting every webpage on the Internet,” so they developed HTML5 instead and grandfathered in every problem that HTML had that XHTML was supposed to fix. Capitalism, like evolution, doesn't guarantee optimal outcomes. It only predicts that something will survive if it's good enough. And the cruel reality is that you can be good enough while being deeply flawed.

