Standards forfeit control. If you can become a de facto standard, without standardizing, you wield insane power over lives and business. Of your examples, Blu-r

Standards forfeit control. If you can become a de facto standard, without standardizing, you wield insane power over lives and business. Of your examples, Blu-ray, DirectX, and the "new age" closed silo IM protocols like WhatsApp that superseded an XMPP world are all corporate controlled properties that have no standards body considering the needs of the industry. They behave and act to fulfill the needs of their creators, to the detriment of the users and broader ecosystem. That is why standards are hard. Because it requires those with power to voluntarily relinquish it, which very rarely will happen. And then to never try to circumvent standards with first mover advantage to reclaim that kind of monopoly power. At least right now societies around the world are very poorly structured to align the incentives towards cooperation.