There are so many of them to choose from. By the time things become standards, they're obsolete. Real standards are set by the market, not committees.
Standards promote interoperability.
RealAudio Other content on the web Desktop applications Word, Excel, etc. To meet projected demand, web capacity needs to increase 10,000-fold. Improvements in infrastructure will result in at most 100 times more capacity. Protocols and use of network need to be 100 times more efficient.