"We fully expect our competitors to join us in embracing open standards with their next redesigns"
About this Quote
A velvet-glove ultimatum disguised as collegial optimism, Mike Davidson's line is corporate diplomacy with a blade in it. "We fully expect" plants a flag: the decision has already been made, the direction has already been anointed, and everyone else is being invited to treat it as inevitable. It's not a request; it's a forecast that dares competitors to prove him wrong.
The phrase "join us" performs inclusivity while quietly asserting leadership. Davidson positions his side not as one player among many, but as the vanguard of sanity, the group already living in the future. That matters because "open standards" isn't just a technical preference; it's a moral aesthetic in web culture. Standards signal cleanliness, interoperability, and respect for users. To resist them is to look proprietary, backward, maybe even a little parasitic. The sentence leverages that reputational pressure: comply and you get to be on the right side of the internet's self-mythology; refuse and you're the villain clutching the old ways.
"With their next redesigns" adds a pragmatic timeline, acknowledging how web change actually happens: not via conversion experiences, but via cycles of refactoring and face-lifts. It's also a subtle way of implying that competitors are due for an overhaul anyway. The subtext: when you finally catch up, you might as well do it our way.
In context, this reads like early-2000s web politics: a moment when standards compliance became a proxy battle over who got to define professionalism online. Davidson's intent is persuasion through inevitability, turning a technical choice into a cultural consensus before the argument even starts.
The phrase "join us" performs inclusivity while quietly asserting leadership. Davidson positions his side not as one player among many, but as the vanguard of sanity, the group already living in the future. That matters because "open standards" isn't just a technical preference; it's a moral aesthetic in web culture. Standards signal cleanliness, interoperability, and respect for users. To resist them is to look proprietary, backward, maybe even a little parasitic. The sentence leverages that reputational pressure: comply and you get to be on the right side of the internet's self-mythology; refuse and you're the villain clutching the old ways.
"With their next redesigns" adds a pragmatic timeline, acknowledging how web change actually happens: not via conversion experiences, but via cycles of refactoring and face-lifts. It's also a subtle way of implying that competitors are due for an overhaul anyway. The subtext: when you finally catch up, you might as well do it our way.
In context, this reads like early-2000s web politics: a moment when standards compliance became a proxy battle over who got to define professionalism online. Davidson's intent is persuasion through inevitability, turning a technical choice into a cultural consensus before the argument even starts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|
More Quotes by Mike
Add to List
