Not terribly long ago, XML was the darling of the web. HTML4 was reformulated as XHTML 1.0, SOAP messages were XML, and let us not forget XMLHttpRequest.

Recently, I was engaged in a genial argument with a friend of an older generation, each of us taking an opposing stance on some obscure trivia neither of us was entirely certain about - but which we were both ready to defend with all the wit and rhetoric at our disposal. When we had finally exhausted all attempts to make the other budge on the matter, we turned to an authoritative 3rd-party source to lay the matter to rest for us - a Google search.