This news sounds great to me, but I feel like I don't understand what's happening behind the curtain and don't grasp the second-order consequences. What would motivate them? I wonder what the political motives are (industry politics, not the other kind that we won't mention here).
Could this eventually displace standards bodies such as WHATWG and W3C? If the Product Advisory Board of Mozilla, Google, and Samsung agree on a standard and publish it at MDN, will that become as official, at least de facto, as a standard published by W3C? I do see W3C is mentioned as a participant.
Also, for the sake of argument (and IMHO, of realism) let's assume that Google, who can virtually set web standards themselves these days, isn't doing this for a purely altruistic motive of supporting the open web. Why would they give up the 'soft power' of writing their own documentation for their own standards?
Modern web companies don't make money from the web, they make money from something you do while you're on the web. The less the web costs to use (in the broadest possible sense of cost), the more people will use it, the more money they will make.
That's why Facebook's trying to pay off Indian ISPs, and Google's pouring money into web browsers and internet balloons. Microsoft came late to this party because their original make-money-from-the-OS model meant they were trying to compete using the browser, but now that they have a cloud strategy like everyone else, the law of complements has turned them into good web citizens too. Thanks, Satya!
1. The people working on these browsers are just that: people. They haven't necessarily been e.g. at Microsoft when IE vs. Netscape was a thing, and probably don't hold grudges. They were hired to work with the web, not against it.
2. There was a lot of duplicate efforts, and MDN was clearly "winning". That's a waste of time.
3. A more "neutral" MDN (although I think they've been doing a pretty good job already) is good for all browser makers. Even if Mozilla and its volunteers are trying to be a non-biased resource, they'll always be writing from their own viewpoint.
4. For Mozilla, MDN being less Mozilla-/Firefox-focused might not sound like a great option, but Mozilla's mission is to build a better, free and open internet, not to be dominant. (Incidentally, that's also the reason MDN "won": this made it able to attract many contributors and supporters.)
In general I like that Google and others are doing this. The web is so complicated, so overwhelming, that a central source of documentation is needed. This "blog posts as documentation" culture is not healthy.
However I think we should all be skeptical of any actions corporations take today until proven otherwise. When 60,000 Americans are dying of opiods per year (that's all the deaths in Vietnam per year) and drug companies will reject calls to regulate them and pay off members of Congress, some constant skepticism is called for (who could of believed they would do that??)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/...
I didn't even realize I was being cynical when I was unsurprised by this news. I don't really understand why everyone else is. (That isn't to say it isn't important news, but the shock that everyone seems to be in is confusing).
Could this eventually displace standards bodies such as WHATWG and W3C? If the Product Advisory Board of Mozilla, Google, and Samsung agree on a standard and publish it at MDN, will that become as official, at least de facto, as a standard published by W3C? I do see W3C is mentioned as a participant.
Also, for the sake of argument (and IMHO, of realism) let's assume that Google, who can virtually set web standards themselves these days, isn't doing this for a purely altruistic motive of supporting the open web. Why would they give up the 'soft power' of writing their own documentation for their own standards?