In the field of defying standards, Google is following Microsoft

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Google is growing out te be the next Microsoft. Driven by shareholders value the company is no longer the underdog. They are starting to set their own standard. The public opinion is changing...

By implementing currently non-standard features on their homepage, Google are
sending out a strong message on what they believe the new standard features
should be, and not coincidently, it is the features that their own browser
implements and supports. This is not the first time Google has sent a
wrecking-ball into the standards process. Google Gears was launched long before
Chrome as a way to implement proposed HTML5 standards, such as offline caching,
into browsers (see my NextGenWeb series from last year). It was born out of frustration
for the slow and beurocratic standardization process ¿ something that Google
couldn't afford to wait for as their web applications could not advance further
without a non-aligned platform to build them on.
A large part of the
anti-trust case against Microsoft was that with combined desktop, browser and server
market dominance the company could abuse that position to make the web a
Microsoft web by implementing Microsoft-only features. Google are using their
dominance to force an issue that has been stalled for far too long ¿ but the
difference is that they are using their force for potentially a greater good (I
hope). The theoretical Microsoft web would have been "this website only supports
Internet Explorer", whereas with Google so far we have "this website is a lot
better, and has sexy buttons, if you use Chrome (which btw is open source)".

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100800192.html