Google praises Microsoft's HTML 5 thoughts

In a rare display of public goodwill between Google and Microsoft, the companies are bonding over Microsoft's decision to actively participate in the HTML 5 standards process.

In a post to the The WHATWG Blog spotted by Ars Technica, Google's Mark Pilgrim, the company's leading HTML 5 evangelist, thanked Microsoft's Adrian Bateman for joining the conversation over HTML 5 development several weeks ago. "On August 7, 2009, Adrian Bateman did what no man or woman had ever done before: he gave substantive feedback on the current editor's draft of HTML5 on behalf of Microsoft. His feedback was detailed and well-reasoned, and it spawned much discussion," Pilgrim wrote.

Despite its role as the developer of the most widely used browser in the world, Microsoft had been practically silent on the development of the HTML 5 standard until August, when Bateman weighed in on some potential choices for how various tags will be implemented in the standard. Since then, Bateman has endorsed the use of the <video> and <audio> tags in the standard, something that Google and other browser developers are very keen in including in the final standard.

HTML 5 is a big part of Google's agenda for the next several years with respect to its Chrome browser and Chrome OS project. Google executives have chided Microsoft for its slow embrace of the project, which would make all browsers more capable of running applications, but have acknowledged that Microsoft's road to HTML 5 is complicated by the fact that many businesses have built applications around the current version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and would be forced to modify or start over from scratch when the new standards are implemented.

"As you might expect, much of the discussion since August 7 has been driven by Microsoft's feedback. After five years of virtual silence, nobody wants to miss the opportunity to engage with a representative of the world's still-dominant browser," Pilgrim wrote.

Google and Microsoft, of course, are otherwise at each other's throats in the day-to-day competition to dominate the tech industry. There's a longstanding animosity between the CEOs of the two companies, and they are each attacking the other's backyard in hopes of defending their current dominant positions. Microsoft has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing a worthy competitor to Google search, and Google has taken aim at Microsoft's dominant position in office productivity software while unveiling plans for its own lightweight operating system.

[forever4now]

Microsoft should just build a new browser around WebKit. This would:

1. eliminate the effort necessary, to bring Trident up to spec. with current web standards.
2. give them HTML5 functionality, out of the box.
3. result in a browser that renders identically to the other WebKit browsers (Chrome, Safari & most native mobile browsers).

Users, with websites designed for IE6-8, could use the old browser(s), in parallel, until all their websites have been "modernized". A slight pain, but it might provide an incentive, to get the sites converted.

[bananaphonerules]

you said it..."identical to other browsers". From their point of view; why bother if its identical. Wheres the differentiation?

[t8]

That would be nice, but they will never do it.
They want closed code and their browser is tied to the kernel of Windows.
This is why the browser is slow and is extrememly vulnerable to viruses.
Microsoft argued years ago (in court) that their browser is not an application but is part of the operating system.
So they may not be able to unbundle the browser without implications.

[forever4now]

@ bananaphonerules

The features of the browser would provide the differentiation.

Chrome, Safari & the mobile browsers all have different features, but the page rendering is the same. This makes the lives of web developers much easier.

[Dalkorian]

IE only websites should be forcibly banned from the internet. I really don't care about the troubles of the idiots who painted themselves into that corner, they made their bed and now they can die in it.

[superswiss]

@t8, IE has long been tied to the shell, never the kernel and also provided APIs that could be used by application developers to deal with Internet protocols etc. For example IE gave birth to AJAX, thanks to the XmlHttpRequest object provided by IE. I recommend you read up on OS theory, so you understand the difference between the shell and the kernel and also where the application APIs are located in an OS. On Windows 7, IE 8 is no longer tied to anything and therefore can even be uninstalled. Windows 7 continues to provide APIs for HTTP communication, HTML rendering and XML parsing even if IE is uninstalled, but a modern OS that doesn't provide those types of APIs wouldn't be a good OS. I also recommend you read up on IE 8's architecture on Vista and Windows 7. You will find that like Chrome, IE8 now isolates each tab in a seperate process and the IE processes just like in Chrome run in a sandbox to drastically minimize the damage malware can do. IE8 is a long way from IE6, which unfortunately is still widely used in particular in the corporate world, but people who throw them together in the same pot just show how ignorant they are.

[tsaojk]

Well done Microsoft! Now us developers/designers can concentrate on creating new stuff rather than fiddle around with IE hacks. It's still amazes me that it has taken MS this long to get involved in an industry standard given the fact that they are one of the most substantial "users" of HTML. May be the fact that their browser share is down to 60's gave them more incentive to play by the rules.

[irdac]

As usual Microsoft have joined in development late. I expect they will now try to implement the strategy they have used before with standards "Envelope, Extend and Extinguish" so that there is a unique proprietary Microsoft version.

[WinNoMo]

+1

[disco-legend-zeke]

" and Google has taken aim at Microsoft's dominant position in office productivity software while unveiling plans for its own lightweight operating system."

this sounds amazingly similar to the position Netscape was in in the mid 90's. If Mark had kept his mouth shut and not alerted Bill, they might have reached their goals.

Instead, Microsoft reacted and killed Netscape by delivering a free web connectivity kit to ISP's. At the time our little ISP was paying $5 to Netscape for a license to connect each new customer. The decision to switch to IEAK was a no brainer. The house of Netscape collapsed from cash starvation.

In the BING vs. GOOGLE battle Microsoft comes very late to the search party, but brings a great product and (IMHO) better response to customer feedback. This time, however, the best Microsoft can hope for is market share.

[eadeguzman]

What's more to hope for? If you get market share, you get everything else.

[Random_Walk]

I doubt that Microsoft could survive for long on, say, Opera's marketshare...

[biffhenerson]

As a developer, I will be happy when ALL of the browsers render exactly the same image and use the same dom. The browser shell can add all the bells and whistles they want. The document area must be made standard in order to reduce development costs and page size.

[zeroplane]

Umm looks like the reporter made a mistake, "the fact that many businesses have built applications around the current version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser" you are wrong sir it would be more correct if you were to say,

"the fact that many businesses have built applications around version six of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser (a browser that is well over eight years old)"