The older web was dominated by competing standards and companies trying to get the "edge" (pun intended), as shenanigans are afoot trying to keep 'your browser' in the lead. IE6 and those days were absolutely horrible.
Of course, the downside (or upside, depending how you view it) is that whatever Google does is now the standard. AMP? Standard. Web APIs? Our implementation is how it is.
Whether we're better off or not remains to be seen. But it sure beats having 20 different types of "USB" standards on the front of my PC from 15 different stakeholders.
At least today when I buy my new external HDD it uses USB, I plug it in, and it "just works". We wouldn't be saying that intrinsically if there were loads of competing standards.
(Whose to say the Linux kernel wouldn't be involved in a fight between $competingComapnies trying to cripple each other? We see tricky things in the kernel from time to time, See [1] and [2])
[1]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-L...
[2]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-59...
Both of your examples point to competing standards: IE6 was a tentative to fork the web standards by Microsoft. The 20 USB form-factors are different connector standards (even if they all implement the same wire protocol).