Comment by rswail

> it's free and open source

It's more than "open source" it's in the public domain.

The file format is fully documented and if someone like ISO or ANSI wanted to, they could make a standard out of it. It's also forward compatible since inception and versioned.

The browser vendors decided not to put SQLite into their browsers because "key/value good, SQL bad" and "not invented here".

IndexedDB is a clumsy reinvention with minimal ACID properties and isn't far advanced from ISAM. They could have used the SQLite file format and implemented IndexedDB as an API over the top. They could have allowed both standards to be implemented and then let reality take its course to choose which one was successful.