[FredPret]

Standardization will be great... for 1-2 years.

After that, you'll start losing out on lost innovation that wasn't allowed to happen.

"Dozens of companies independently spending millions solving the same problems" only seems wasteful if you don't think about this in terms of at least a couple of steps of game theory. Competing co's come up with a variety of different solutions, leaving us in a more robust state with lots of different options.

Also, good luck getting a standard that the US and EU agrees on - look at how differently the free market solved the car problem in both of those places. Europeans and Americans want different things from their vehicles.