The WHATWG was formed in response to the slow development of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web standards and W3C's decision to abandon HTML in favor of XML-based technologies.
WHATWG moodustati vastukaaluks W3C aeglasele veebistandardite arendusele ning otsusele hüljata HTML-i arendus XML-il baseeruvate tehnoloogiate kasuks.