Are there any features they are pushing in Chrome they are simultaneously not pushing on w3c to adopt? The problem with IE6 is that it not only did its own thing, it did the opposite thing the standard said to do. If Chrome is just standard + new stuff, and that new stuff eventually becomes standard, it isn't a problem. But its standard + new stuff + anti-standard bullshit, the latter is the issue and Google should be criticized for it.
Web standards seem, from where I'm standing, to be very post-hoc.
Indeed, I think that's the way it ought to be. How many times has it worked out well when you've fully specified something, before you attempt to actually build it? For me that number is very close to 0.
I think this is a much better practice than a bunch of dudes just deciding what browsers will support and how they support it without actually trying it on first.
It's pretty much all in the open. No need for conspiracy theories. The environment is significantly different than it was during the early IE days.
And then every browser had to either 1. be "broken" because the web-pages didn't work, or 2. forego W3C, standard-process and all that and emulate IE's bugs in order to be "real" browsers people could use.
And long after IE6 is gone, all that is still hanging around, causing issues to this day.
Right now we're getting a Chrome monoculture. People are using pre-standard Chrome and Webkit only features in production websites. In the future those websites will stick around, no matter if Chrome users update their browsers or not.
Chrome is the new IE. With Google giving a shit about real standardization, launching non-standard features in Chrome and production websites at the same time, they are the new Microsoft.