It makes a lot more sense for browser makers (which, by my last count, consist mainly of four or so major vendors... FF, Chrome, Safari, and IE) to have to keep up with novel web standards than for web developers (10,000? 50,000? 100,000?) to have to keep up with browser inconsistencies. Sure, there are places where the standards are inconsistent. This sort of shift will force the W3C to move faster to improve the standards, which is good news for everybody.

As a researcher, I think giving to the most elite is a moderately good idea. Reading most of the research that's generated by people like me, you realize it's just PhDs trying their darnedest to ++publicationCount, which is a pretty stupid thing for taxpayer dollars to fund. The major work, more often than not, comes out of well-renown labs, and the students who come out of those labs.

On the other hand, lots of the fundamental knowledge necessary for the "major work" mentioned earlier comes from the incremental work that isn't sexy in its own right, but very necessary nonetheless. No simple answer here.