

Web Technologies Need an Owner - joshaber
http://joehewitt.com/post/web-technologies-need-an-owner/

======
mapgrep
"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform."

Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence.
But actually the Web is already dominant among the platforms Hewitt mentions
(Web, Windows, iOS, and Android).

Relevant stats:

Web - 1.7 billion users as of July, given that 880 million people go to the
single busiest website publicly measured by Google, and this site has a
"reach" of 51 percent. (You can distill this same total from any of the
smaller sites listed via simple division.)
<http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/>

iOS - 38 million people as of April
[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-
users-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-apple-
still-trouncing-android/?mod=yahoo_hs)

Android - 24 million people as of April
[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-
users-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-apple-
still-trouncing-android/?mod=yahoo_hs)

Windows - 400 million Windows 7 license sold as of this month, the most
popular version of Windows going.
[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2011/07/11/400-million-
windows-7-licenses-sold.aspx) Even if piracy doubles total Windows 7 installs,
you're still not halfway to total web users (which means trying to count
creaky old XP as the same platform won't get you there, either).

Hewitt is a smart guy, ex Facebook, built their iOS client, so clearly he has
a thought a lot about platforms. But he undermines his arguments about the
future when he is incorrect about the present.

~~~
joehewitt
Sorry if I didn't make it clear I meant the web will never be the dominant
platform in the future once the current trends play out. I am aware of current
market share proportions.

~~~
mapgrep
Using the word "never" saves you from having to state _when_ the web ceases to
be the dominant platform. When do you think this will be?

Something like "the web will never be the dominant platform, except for the
past 10 years and the next 10 years" does lack a certain punch, but at least
it would be specific :-)

(And I appreciate your taking the time to write your blog post, and don't want
to be a jerk, but the definition of never is "at no time in the past or
future; on no occasion; not ever," so maybe you could rephrase to something
like "the web cannot continue indefinitely being the dominant platform," which
at least acknowledges its current strength.)

~~~
joehewitt
You're right, it's not the best sentence I've written in my life. Thanks for
the feedback.

I was trying to convey that the web is always going to have to fight for its
survival, contrary to the common assumption that the web has some magical
properties that ensure its long-term prominence.

~~~
epe
Agreed that the web doesn't have any "magical properties", but it has the
"Worse is Better" survival characteristic; or at least it did in its early
days. I think the web's continued dominance depends on the extent to which it
retains those characteristics.

------
guelo
I am a fan of Joe Hewitt but this is crazy talk, especially coming from one of
the heroes of the Mozilla revolution. It's as if he doesn't remember those
dark days long ago when he was working on Firefox in what seemed like a lost
cause, Microsoft was the defacto standard setter and single-handedly drove
innovation in the web, it was awful. We must never go back to those days. I
know Joe imagines some benevolent dictator or consortium, but it's just too
risky. There's too much power in controlling the web and power corrupts. Look
at what's happened to ICANN with the power they've been given. No, we must
keep the power spread out, preferably we'd have more browser makers not fewer.
The slow pace might be frustrating to the innovators on the cutting edge like
Joe, but it's the only way.

~~~
joehewitt
Exactly the kind of arrogance I cited. You don't want to risk a bad owner so
you'll let the whole thing die from neglect by committee. I would rather have
Microsoft be the only browser vendor than have the web shrink dramatically.

~~~
philikon
Because when Microsoft was the only browser vendor, the web evolved really
quickly... OWAIT

~~~
randomdata
But was the browser monoculture to blame?

The web went through a painful stale period from about 2000 to 2005, during
which time IE asserted near total dominance. However, sites are just now
starting to phase out IE6 support. That means that the technology that has
advanced the web over the past five or so years was there all along.

Interest in the web started to return around the same time Firefox started to
gain in fanfare, but why? Was Firefox to thank? Those "Web 2.0" apps could
have just as easily been developed in IE6 in 2001. It wasn't the technology
that Firefox brought that made the difference.

~~~
yuhong
>However, sites are just now starting to phase out IE6 support.

All this proves is that the IE6 monoculture had such an effect that it took a
long time for the effects to disappear. But yes IE4 and particularly IE5.x
introduced a lot of new stuff that did not become well known until years
later, like the infamous XMLHTTPRequest.

------
bonzoesc
> Browser vendors are innovating in some areas, but they are stalled by the
> standards process in so many areas that is impossible to create a platform
> with a coherent, unified vision the way Apple has with Cocoa or the way
> Python has with Guido.

Nobody actually wants that web; we'd have somebody's "coherent, unified
vision" circa 1995, with a handful of updates every year or two. I like my web
as a fierce competition between browser vendors to desperately catch up to
their peers in terms of speed and features.

------
dangoor
While there are a couple of minor bits I agree with, overall I think Joe's off
on this one.

The web has five organizations pushing really hard on it at this point
(Mozilla [my employer], Google, Apple, Microsoft and Opera). The web almost
had HP. We'll see what happens with WebOS.

The one part of his article that I somewhat agree with is that under the
guidance of several entities (and lots and lots of people) the web may not
have quite the same coherence as, say, Cocoa. I'm not sure that will be a
problem.

"The Web has no one who can ensure that the platform acquires cutting edge
capabilities in a timely manner (camera access, anyone?)."

Five years ago, even two years ago, would anyone even be questioning adding
camera access to the web? I think there's been a huge shift in terms of how
people view web technology.

gmail was the original "holy crap" app that started us building information
apps with better user experiences. It proceeded from there to add things like
canvas and svg and, more recently, webgl and audio, making apps well beyond
"information apps" possible.

The "Boot to Gecko" (B2G) project which Mozilla kicked off a couple of months
back is going to push quite firmly on adding all of the APIs needed for a
modern mobile device. And, I might add, in conjunction with others in the
standards bodies who are interested in such things.

And what about the Metro announcement from last week? Sure, Microsoft's ideal
scenario is to build on the web and lock people into APIs that are tied to
their platform... but, seriously, wouldn't people just write shims? Wouldn't
Microsoft ultimately have to follow the standard because they are not quite
the monopoly they were before?

The end of his post is telling:

"The closest thing we have to that today is Chromium, but they have no
foothold in mobile and are likely years away from having one. And so I end on
a sad note"

So, the crux of it would seem to be that Joe sees the world going mobile. I
certainly agree. I got my start on a TRS-80 model III, and the stuff happening
in mobile is the most exciting stuff I've seen in my entire career.

I've been working with the web for 16 years. There has never been a time in
the past when so much effort was being put into pushing the web-as-a-platform
forward. It's huge and I, for one, think the best is yet to come.

~~~
joehewitt
It didn't take a seer to imagine that having camera access was a good idea,
but it takes a pretty boneheaded committee to wait this long to do it. Hell,
Adobe put camera access in Flash years before iOS even existed. I don't love
Flash, but even they benefitted from have a single owner.

Lots of good things coming to the platform now, but progress was even faster
in the mid-90's when Netscape and IE were growing up. IE4 and IE5 in
particular had a lot of great features that have since been forgotten, and are
only now being reconsidered for standardization. Remember behaviors, image
filters, CSS expressions, and data binding?

~~~
dangoor
I realize that my reply didn't address the fact that camera access took a long
time. You're right... I don't think it's because of a boneheaded committee,
though. I'm just guessing, because I have nothing to do with this directly,
but I'm guessing that people either:

1\. weren't really thinking that the web _needed_ camera access 2\. thought
there were higher priority things

And yes, Flash had camera access first. How's that working out for them
relative to web technologies?

~~~
Me1000
For years Flash held a dominate position on the web. Without Flash YouTube who
knows how long it would have taken for something like YouTube to be created?
That stagnation is a fundamental problem.

------
coderdude
>>"Browser vendors are innovating in some areas, but they are stalled by the
standards process in so many areas that is impossible to create a platform
with a coherent, unified vision the way Apple has with Cocoa or the way Python
has with Guido."

Personally I don't think he has anything meaningful to say on this particular
topic. Hard to tell because he can't even keep his examples consistent. "...
the way Apple has with [a product] or the way Python has with [a person]."

>>"Even if WebKit was the only game in town, it would still be crucial for it
to have competent, sympathetic, benevolent leaders."

This statement, as well as others in the article and his apparent association
with Apple-related things makes me wonder if he has this point of view because
of the whole Steve Jobs thing they have/had going on. The fact that he doesn't
even mention the W3C or the WHATWG shows his point of view is skewed.

------
neilk
I don't understand the argument. Joe is saying that the web stack (that is,
HTTP/HTML/JS/CSS) deserves to be saved. And that the only way to save it is to
have somebody own it.

But what makes the web stack special if someone owns it? Why is it worth
saving? Let's face it, if you actually bought The Web(tm) from a vendor, you'd
ask for your money back.

------
nextparadigms
I disagree that the web tech should be owned by a company. It seems to me the
"committee" has done a much better job the Microsoft alone, so far.

But if there was to be such company, it should clearly be Google. Both Apple
and Microsoft don't really have their interests aligned with the web. They
make money from hardware or from selling OS licenses. By default, that means
that their #1 priority is to do that - and in many cases at the expense of the
web. If they would own it, and they would ever have a conflict of interest
between the web and their main platform, they would choose their main
platform.

But Google have their interests much more aligned with the web. They care
about making the web faster, more advanced, and so on, because they indirectly
make money from that.

But of course, even Google owning the tech would bring it's own set of
problems, and this will happen with any company owning it. Any company who
would own it would "corrupt" it in some way, if only to be better for their
own products or less good for the others.

That's why the Internet is _decentralized_ in many ways, and it's the beauty
of the Internet. We've had many closed platforms before, but none like the
Internet. And the Internet is the greatest one by far, and I doubt it's by
coincidence.

If you look at other "cross-platform" technologies, like Flash for example,
they ultimately fail, because a single owner can't make sure it works on
absolutely every platform and browsers, with no problems. It requires too much
work.

And again, that's one of the beauties of the web technologies, that every
browser _has_ to do their own implementation of the spec as good as possible,
and compete with each other for that.

One more thing. Yes, iOS and Android did help bring back to popularity the
native applications, but this is not an "ultimate" win. It's just a cycle.
We've had native apps when the PC's emerged, then we had web-apps becoming
popular. Then the smartphones emerged with slow processors (compared to PC's)
and native apps started being popular again. But HTML5 is already starting to
become popular on mobiles, and with at least 3-4 platforms, you can be sure
the web will "win", at least this cycle, until a new low-performance tech
comes along and native apps are back.

------
simonhamp
Ultimately, I think there is some truth to what Joe is saying. We have already
seen the web stagnate under the reign of IE6 - almost a decade of no real
innovation.

As web developers, we are limited by what the browsers are capable of. That's
not to say we don't desire more... hence why a good proportion of devs and
designers are using the very latest technology even though it hasn't been
fully ratified by it's standards bodies.

People _want_ to innovate on the web. With every single one of the other
platforms, the web comes for free - they have a browser and a working HTTP
stack.

I think the challenge is protecting users. The fact that web is such a widely-
used platform means even small changes to the supporting technologies can have
vast security repercussions.

It's not ownership that's the problem - it's fear. What we need is a browser
vendor that's prepared to stick it's neck out, to be daring with the
technologies.

Also fear of accountability... as soon as you become the leader in the browser
wars you become accountable for a huge proportion of the world's web
experience. This was why IE stagnated.

So as a browser vendor, who do you cater for? The billions who just use your
software, or the few-million who want to innovate on it?

This is why taking ownership is not an option. I would argue that browser
vendors would actually prefer to have an equal proportion of users. If Android
and iOS had that sort of reach, they would face the same problem. The
difference being that some platforms actually make more money out of a wider
reach.

This changes the dynamic somewhat - of course the owners of those technologies
want to innovate, it's a huge income stream. But if someone took charge of the
web, who would get all of the money? Who would pay?

So there's little incentive for ownership and in fact the last few decades
have proven that there doesn't need to be ownership of the web to make it
work. All we need is someone to stick their neck out - just like Apple did
with the iPhone.

------
epaulson
This is sort of a cleaned-up version of his string of tweets from a year back:

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/joe-hewitt-web-development/>

------
tlianza
One thing these discussions seem to be slipping into is "the web" vs. "native"
while skipping the fact that "native" is not a thing, it's a collection of
(competing!) things... and they all also run web apps.

Until _one_ native platform captures more usage than the browser, which is
impossible unless platforms start to drop the browser, the web will by
definition be dominant if dominance is measured by addressable market.

------
olliesaunders
What’s the W3C then?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Irrelevant, if you consider their decision to promote XHTML2 while the rest of
the world committed to HTML5 - incidentally, a development that puts to rest
the fear that the web can't evolve and stay relevant without a single BDFL.

~~~
olliesaunders
They may be crappy but they are still the organization in charge of the
development and standardization of web technologies, which he is arguing
doesn’t exist. It does. It just isn’t as good as we’d like.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
My point is that the W3C is most successful as the agent that documents retro-
specs of the broad consensus among browser makers and developers and calls it
a standard. The community is more or less self-governing.

------
groby_b
It's kind of amusing to read an article complaining about the walled garden of
Facebook, and at the same time demanding central ownership for web technology.

It's not only a possibility that a centralized web will be bad, it's
inevitable. A central owner has _no_ incentive for improvement. The only
reason e.g. Cocoa keeps improving is because it needs to compete.

~~~
joehewitt
Has Linux stopped improving? Has Python stopped improving? Has jQuery stopped
improving? It all depends on who the owner is.

~~~
groby_b
Linux doesn't own the OS market - far from it. Python doesn't own the language
sector. jQuery doesn't own the JS library sector. They are all independent
projects, and it's _good_ for them to have a BDFL.

Asking for one for the entire web is not a good plan because it would exclude
competition. That's where the flaw in the argument is.

And while it'd be nice if browser vendors could just go off and improve along
(from a browser vendor's point of view), it absolutely sucks for every single
developer and the users. Surely, you remember "this website runs only on...".
This is exactly what you see in the apps market - applications only running on
certain devices, locking in the users. Sure, for you as a developer it's
convenient. For users, it's a bad idea.

~~~
joehewitt
My point wasn't that Linux or Python or jQuery own their sectors. I responding
to your claim that a single owner promotes stagnation.

It's important to distinguish the Internet from the collection of web
technologies. The Internet is the thing that needs to remain open and
uncontrolled.

~~~
groby_b
My point is that a central owner _without competition_ stifles innovation.
There's only one web, so a central owner would be a bad thing - for the web.
To quote your article "To thrive, HTML and company need what those other
platforms have: a single source repository and a good owner to drive it"

The only other way to read that is that you're advocating splintering web
technology into HTML-Moz, HTML-IE, HTML-Cr and so on. While that might make
for a better developer experience for somebody who develops apps for _one_ of
those platforms, it's a disaster in terms of interoperability. Which is kind
of one of the key points of "The Web".

We were heading down that path for a while with browser-specific extensions,
and it lead to large problems. For users, because they needed to have "just
the right browser". And for many backend services, because actually extracting
data from web pages required understanding all competing standards.

I care mostly about the users. The web of yore, with "best viewed with"
stickers was a debacle in terms of UX.

------
braindead_in
Why can't it be both native and web apps sharing the application space
together? Each have their own strengths and one does not necessarily have to
dominate over the other. There will always be use cases where a native app
makes more sense and vice-verse. There is enough depth and breadth in the
applications domain to allow both of them to thrive.

------
tambourine_man
The Web doesn't have _an_ owner, it has several. Competing against it other.
That's why it is thriving.

It had no owner and it suffered when MS had 95% of the Web's market share,
cause MS's platform is Windows, not the Web. Controlling it was MS's way of
keeping Windows relevant.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
In your mind, who are the owners?

~~~
tambourine_man
Well, Apple, Google, Mozilla and MS control the browser scene, and that's what
I think Joe meant by platform. Things are a little more complicated in the
backend.

You could add Facebook to the pack but, though it has changed how people use
the Web, it didn't contribute much to improving the platform.

And in a sense, although it may sound idealistically foolish, all of us. A
long time ago, I helped fixing a bug that prevented Webkit and Gecko from
connecting to my bank's crappy site, making me launch VirtualPC just about
everyday. A few years later, I wrapped a perl script in a GUI that spared the
users of a broadband provider from having to manually login in on the
carrier's “portal” just to use the Web. A lot of people used it and they
eventually changed that annoying behavior. There's nothing stopping you from
trying to have an influence.

------
etherael
Isn't this a little bit like asking for the days when IE6 was the ultimate in
web technology back again? Look how that turned out.

------
EGreg
Well, I agree that WebKit should probably be adopted in Internet Explorer, so
Microsoft can once again innovate in the browser space while helping everyone.
Maybe they should join Google and Apple in embracing open source software and
committing their changes into a free project. Because then everyone wins,
including Microsoft. No more IE6 nonsense.

We always have this question of centralized / decentralized. Whether it's
social networks, or government, or the web. Flash was a centralized platform,
and so what? Many people complain that iTunes and Flash etc. are not super
accessible, and also that companies which exert influence tend to lock up
their customers (except maybe Google and Yahoo :) The best example of this
when it comes to the desktop was Microsoft. They wanted to get everyone into
their ecosystem. Now Apple is the new Microsoft.

I personally think that "open source" should always be a competitor to
proprietary stuff. Whatever the centralized effort would be, it should be open
source. I personally think javascript-based technologies like the browser,
jQuery, like PhoneGap and like Node.js are going to become more and more
important. So what we really need is a standard ECMAScript that is implemented
correctly everywhere, and we're pretty much there.

------
gojomo
The web has already crushed a bunch of 'owned' platforms that had strong-
willed, deep-pocketed stewards. A good run for iOS, and a few features where
the web lags, doesn't change the immense power of the web commons platform.
The things proven-out by adjacent proprietary platforms will be assimilated,
in a few years' time — plenty of time for multivendor adoption and mass-market
usership.

(It won't be standards bodies that lead the way — they never do. At best they
can codify consensus after the fact, and lightly shame laggards. Instead a
rotating selection of innovators, in different categories, will drive change.)

------
wavephorm
I think he is underestimating the quantum leap that web technologies have made
in the past 2 years.

Between canvas, audio & audio data, video tag, css3, websockets, webworkers,
webgl, touchscreen events, and new server tech like nodejs... there are now so
many new API's to learn and work with that most web developers haven't even
started to catch up yet. There's a lot of room here, the capabilities of the
permutations of these technologies together will take years to fully realize.
It will take years to write libraries to build the power-features necessary to
really take this stuff to the next level.

The power to build a amazing new apps is now here. It took 10 years for this
leap to happen. Just give it some time for web developers to catch up.

~~~
Me1000
Compare that to the progress of native development. Apple comes out with new
cool things on iOS every year, whereas on the web it takes 5 years to get
something new that is 10 years behind the native counterparts.

~~~
drgath
The difference is that the iOS stuff only runs on $500 devices. The web stuff
runs on just about everything. No one ever said standards were easy.

~~~
Me1000
Everything the web runs on now is much more advanced than the computers of 10
years ago.

Joe's point he made a year ago is still true today, but it hasn't happened.
"Browser makers need to go nuts with non-standard APIs and let the W3C
standardize later"

------
earl
Isn't this similar to what happened with opengl (industry consortium, no clear
driver) vs directx (ms owns; highly motivated; actually pretty decent a couple
revs in)? Carmack seems to now find DirectX superior [1]. Note I'm not a
graphics programmer so this is just my superficial understanding of the
matter.

The quote from AMD's dev relations manager is damning: "AMD's GPU worldwide
developer relations manager, Richard Huddy, agrees. He added that the actual
innovation in graphics has been driven by Microsoft in the last ten or so
years. 'OpenGL has largely been tracking that, rather than coming up with new
methods,' he said. 'The geometry shader, for example, which came in with Vista
and DirectX 10, is wholly Microsoft's invention in the first place.'" [1 also]

[1] [http://www.tomshardware.com/news/john-Carmack-DirectX-
OpenGL...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/john-Carmack-DirectX-OpenGL-API-
Doom,12372.html)

------
freemarketteddy
Truth hurts doesnt it!

I think Joe is spot on.The web is already miles behind native mobile
platforms.Personally I can vouch for iOS.The kind of stuff you can do on iOS
now just in terms of UI is just impossibly hard to do with HTML5 or any other
web platform.

But then if you think about it.Its not surprising at all.Of course you will
have a much more power on a native platform than a web platform which is built
on top of a native platform.

In my opinion in the future you will have a browser and type in a url but a
native app will open in the browser window.These native apps will be built for
different platforms.The web app will be shown by default if a native app hasnt
been developed for that platform.

~~~
mahyarm
WebGL is picking up steam. Supported in Webkit and Firefox, with IE being the
laggard (as usual). Once you have WebGL you have the building blocks needed
for any kind of UI you want.

~~~
freemarketteddy
Yes WebGL is the first step....like OpenGLES ...next step would be something
like CoreAnimation and CoreGraphics....then something like UIKit....(then
something like Three20 haha!)

Although I think its very hard for any company including Google or Facebook to
make something the matches the design quality of these frameworks....The real
problem is that no one company or person is going to take this
responsibility...and hence even a good attempt will end up looking like a
clusterfuck....and that is exactly what Joe is trying to say!...the Web needs
its Apple!

Not to mention that by the time something like UIKit exists for the Web Apple
would be miles ahead!

