OSNews

I think the difference is in intent, which in turn is a function of business model. Right from the start Microsoft saw the web as a threat to it's business which was to ensure that everything that supported it's OS/Productivity monopoly flourished and everything that even remotely threatened it or even opened an alternative space did not flourish. Microsoft thought that a neutral browser that ran equally well on any platform undermined it's platform strategy. It's answer was a closed proprietary browser engine and the crushing of netscape by leveraging the Windows OS monopoly. Once netscape was finished and IE ruled Microsoft lost interest in browser development because they didn't want the web to be a rich and developing experience, they wanted it to be a tepid backwater compared to Windows apps.

Now compare that to Webkit, which is open and non-proprietary. Both the most important companies driving webkit development, Google and Apple, want an open standards based feature rich web, although both want that for different reasons. They don't want that because they are kind of heart, they want that because an open standards based feature rich web enhances and synegises with both their (different) core business models.

I think it is unlikely that webkit will go the way of IE.