Read this blog post about the insane amount of backward compatibility in Google Maps. Now ask the question of Chrome. How in god's name do you rationalize cutting off all of the open web? Go talk with the Google Maps people and tell them what you're doing. Backward compatibility isn't just a nice idea to do when you can, it's something you have to bend over backwards to do. It's respectful of your place in the world. Companies come and go, but the human race, we hope is constant. One company doesn't get to decide when we walk away from our past. That's one of the responsibilities that comes with having a market-dominant product. #

Back in the day, people complained about Microsoft, but I marveled that Windows NT and XP could run the outlining software I shipped in 1984. For all I know the version of Windows they ship today still can. I don't know why they did it, but I respect that they did. And for all the evil that Microsoft heaped on the web in the early days, how they tried to cut off its air supply, and turn it into a feature of Office, deep inside there was still the heart of responsible developer. That's universal, it isn't something that becoming the biggest baddest mofo on the planet absolves you of. You still have a heart, and your shit still stinks, and you're still going to die. So let's try, all of us, to leave something behind. If we keep destroying our archives, none of the good we do can last. #