Pointer Events is a Candidate Recommendation at the W3C
http://www.w3.org/TR/pointerevents/
It has 2 implementations (Firefox has implemented in a special branch and is working to port it to their main codebase) and a near complete test suite. Thus it's expected to reach the final Recommendation state soon.
So I don't think the standardization status will change Google's opinion here.
(I edit the PE spec and work on IE)
Re:Blink won’t implement pointer events
by matthewmacleod on Friday August 15, 2014 @12:28PM
(#8182884)
Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API.
It's a W3C recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/
AFAIK there was a issue with Apple holding some copyrights on the api,might have changed.
There was a delay, but we worked past it. The web would definitely be a better place if Apple would participate in the input API standardization process though.
Re:Blink won’t implement pointer events
by icantthinkofone on Friday August 15, 2014 @02:30PM
(#8183477)
It won't become a standard unless there are at least two complete implementations in browsers.
We are in a weird era where HTML5/web apis kind of succeeded ,making plugins almost obsolete, yet i'm still not sure 5/10 years from now,vendors will still be on that same line.The temptation of implementing proprietary APIs is still huge.
Touch events for instance are a still proprietary API.