Web Assembly: A Browser Technology to Solve a Specific Problem in the Browser

Mozilla's Web Assembly was intended to solve a very specific problem in the browser. They were trying to come up with a way to run non JavaScript languages in the browser and make it so that JavaScript could draw on the strengths of code written in different languages. It worked fairly well, except not a lot of people knew what to do with this technology. But Mozilla got all the major browser vendors to use it.