...and MS and Google and Apple. A protocol is harder to get off the ground and it's arguably much harder/not possible at any arbitrary point in history, but when it does work, it's much more powerful than what any single company can achieve.
Not Apple per se, but NeXT was pretty important in the development of the early web as I understand it. The first web browser / editor (WorldWideWeb) ran on their platform.
MS was so afraid of the web that IE achieved (by fair means or foul) 95% usage share between 1995 and 2003[0]. Be sure to check out the webs growth over that period. While the companies I listed may not be "cool" what they did, whether they liked it or not, is bring use of the http protocol to the mainstream. The point is that the protocol dictated the field they all had to compete on. Which is why Google has invested significant resources to dominate the protocol, but it's taken them a very long time.
There's a parallel universe where Microsoft used their monopoly muscle, legal department, and influence over the W3C to crush the Web 2.0 we know. Maybe we still get AJAX and all that followed without XMLHttpRequest, but there's no guarantee it would have been as free and open as it was.
