Google Counters Apple's HTML5 Showcase With HTML5Rocks (Yes, It's Really Called That)
Earlier this month, Apple unveiled a new site to showcase HTML5. On it, Apple showed off a number of impressive web demos coded using only HTML5 technologies. However, at least on the main page …
Context & Ripple Effects
The move completes a year-long Google pivot toward the open web stack: the company retired Gears in favor of HTML5 back in November 2009, then spent spring 2010 proving the standard's muscle with Quake running natively in the browser and an HTML5 rebuild of Google Reader. Apple's own HTML5 demo site, unveiled earlier in June 2010, framed those same technologies as an argument against plug-ins — and implicitly for the app-store model.
First-order effects
- Web developers now have two competing vendor-backed learning resources — Apple's demo gallery and Google's HTML5Rocks tutorials — each optimized for a different browser engine and a different strategic message about where apps should live.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Google have turned HTML5 support from a compliance checkbox into a marketing battleground, pressuring Mozilla, Microsoft, and Opera to showcase their own engines or cede the developer-mindset high ground.
Third-order effects
- If vendors keep funding showcase-and-education sites as competitive weapons, HTML5 maturation accelerates on vendor money rather than standards-body cadence — shifting leverage over how web apps are built toward whoever controls the most popular rendering engine.
The trend: Platform vendors are weaponizing web-standard advocacy, using developer education and demos as proxies in the broader fight over native apps versus the open web.