Big time Vs Small time

Ok, so I'm a small time designer working on small time sites that might get 10000 hits a week. I try and make sure that my code it 100% valid and that my sites work across all the major browsers.

Why is it, that the big time sites such as iGoogle, Facebook, even some pages on the BBC website have errors allover them.
(I don't understand this one as I think their home page s one of the best around and it's 100% valid.)

Should these super high traffic sites not set the standard for us to follow, rather than just showing contempt for the web standards?

What are you're thoughts on this?

Money. They have the choice (as we all do) of "guns or butter" and they put the money on the development of new stuff rather than devoting money (time is money) on fixing errors.

You and me - we take over their IT departments and we will set them straight! :thumbsup:

That's you and I, jerry. Grammar shall prevail. :P

It really depends on the team they hire. These guys might just not care about web standards, and the employing company probably doesn't really know that area either--that's why they hired the team. Also, development costs do take effect: they would rather pay to add new things than revise old things, and if an obscure validation error comes up on a perfectly functional page, it's almost bound to be missed.

Do love the BBC homepage, though.

You and me, Cyan, will get the grammer right!

And if I don't get the grammar correct, she will get me with a left, too.

I have often wondered the same thing about validation on big name sites. One theory I used to believe but sort of question now if whether some amount of invalid markup improve cross-browser compatibility. Just a thought... not sure.