&gt; Now, in 2015, it&#x27;s more of the same, following Google Chrome instead of having a vision, sticking to it, and just implementing it.<p>I disagree. This is 100% in line with Mozilla&#x27;s vision (except arguably the Flash exception).<p>&gt; They&#x27;re also a source of cutting-edge and&#x2F;or specialized functionality that isn&#x27;t part of the browser and may never be.<p>That runs directly counter to Mozilla&#x27;s vision for the Web as a dominant, universal platform. They&#x27;re non-standard, oftentimes non-portable, and rarely provide functionality that couldn&#x27;t be replicated in the browser[0].<p>&gt;  I mean, there&#x27;s a reason plugins exist and I don&#x27;t see that anything has changed to negate that.<p>Anecdotally, all the plugins that I can remember ever using - as far back as Shockwave during the 90s - were really just stopgaps that attempted to bridge the holes that have since been filled by HTML5 features such as audio, video, WebGL, etc.<p>What are the plugins that still exist that wouldn&#x27;t be better implemented as web-native, and which don&#x27;t make good candidates for extending the definition of what should be considered web-native?<p>[0] Rarely, not never. Though in the cases where they can&#x27;t, it&#x27;s worth thinking whether these should be added to the HTML5 standards - necessity is how we got stuff like WebAudio, after all.