Monopoly isn't the only thing that allows you to charge large margins.

API inference access is naturally a lot more costly to provide compared to Chat UI and Claude Code, as there is a lot more load to handle with less latency. In the products they can just smooth over load curves by handling some of the requests slower (which the majority of users in a background Code session won't even notice).

The comission has themselves made the commitment to reduce the reliance on exactly such standards. You are arguing for a position that they themselves aren't even arguing for as they recognize the importance of the problem.

By your logic, it would have been fine for Apple to stick with the Lightning port for charging because USB->Lightning charging ports are widely available so "it's not a problem at all".

> you can go all the way back to Office 2007 (with the compatibility pack) and open modern documents

Great, I can open proprietary document formats with proprietary software. I think you are missing the point of this "performative exercise".

I think you overestimate how niche it really is. In the browser it's an essential part for many creative/productivity tools, e.g. Figma or Miro. On the backend it's used quite regularly as sandboxing mechanism or plugin system, e.g. Istio, Helm or OPA (so generally a high prominence in the CNCF ecosystem).

There are a lot more niche web standards that have a lot less usage that stuck around for a log time (e.g. the recent debate around removal of XSLT)

EDIT (as I can't edit the orginal comment anymore): The America - English disticts are very lively and it seem like everyone in Europe is also now using those.