Standards Battles
There are many examples of de facto consolidation (of a standard) by market forces and competition, in a two-sided market, after a dispute. Examples:
- Alternating current (Tesla's) over direct current (Edison's): see War of Currents.
- VHS over Betamax (see videotape format war): when the VHS format for videotape recording was introduced, other recording formats were already available in the market. Regardless of whether Betamax was superior from a technical point of view or not, the VHS format won the format war due to superior marketing tactics by its proponents. The market could not support two competing formats; VHS became the de facto standard and Betamax was eventually withdrawn.
- Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD (see high definition optical disc format war).
Examples of standards that are "in dispute" for turns de facto:
- OpenOffice's OpenDocument format (a de facto standard for UNIX users) vs Microsoft's Office Open XML format (a de facto standard for MS-Windows users).
- Adobe Flash vs Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), for vector graphics web page animations.
Read more about this topic: De Facto Standard
Famous quotes containing the words standards and/or battles:
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“Know your enemy as you know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.”
—Chinese proverb.