Interestingly, this type of perspective is only gained in hindsight.
For example, I could see a future, say in 10 years, where we have a vastly better way to browse the web and then we will look back on today and think that Chrome(ium) was coasting on its past success and only providing minor new features (while ensuring that ads continue to be as profitable as possible).
I definitely remember takes in the genre of "who cares if IE is never updated. What else could you possibly do on the web?" back when websites were mostly static, JavaScript was still a toy, and all the people who could imagine better were trying to convince everyone to switch to [Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox]. Microsoft had the inspiration for XMLHttpRequest right there and couldn't see past its Windows-centric strategy.
There's an alternate timeline where Microsoft leaned on anyone implementing it. We never would have gotten as far as Sun suing Google over the Java API because no one crossed Microsoft.
No AJAX. No web 2.0. No SPAs. It would be a different world.
Uh? Did you even remember IE? How are the two scenarios even remotely comparable? It was abandon-ware, after Netscape was crushed Ballmer couldn’t imagine anything useful for IE.
For example, I could see a future, say in 10 years, where we have a vastly better way to browse the web and then we will look back on today and think that Chrome(ium) was coasting on its past success and only providing minor new features (while ensuring that ads continue to be as profitable as possible).