Well, it's not like I haven't added the notice "(the companies)" after "we" twice.
By which "companies" (something also clear from the context), I mean Apple, MS, Google etc, the companies working on rendering engines and browser.
I used "we" to adopt the parent comment's use of "we" and his idea of the web as a common project all those companies share.
>so I can take great care to avoid ever working for them.
Well, since you already work for Google, it's understandable you seeing this as silly and thinking they are all for open and the web's progress.
I don't think that's the general perception people have of Google though -- nor that it is correct.
"We're doing our own thing that we totally control and will likely only show up in our products"
is better than
"We're contributing to one of the best/most successful opensource projects around and thereby making the web better for people across devices and platforms".
for anyone other than Google.
No, we (the companies) don't.
We work to get web features that we can leverage.
If we can get away with them being adopted by everybody but solely controlled by us, it's all the merrier. If we can get away with keeping some features to ourselves as a competitive advantage ditto.
If we can push our agenda and standards instead of collaborating and iterating faster on common ones, that's great too.
We (the companies) could care less about the web, in any way in which it doesn't affect our bottom line.
In fact, if we have to stall the Web's progress to protect some of our own investments and offerings, we're all for it.
Also, if we have to stall the Web's progress just to avoid some competitor getting his stuff adopted and standardized first, we're all for it.