The Web may be built on the ideal of standards, but the history and issues of those standards are far more complex than they appear, Neil McAllister explains. Standards drafted by the industry and put in place as such are one thing, but Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz explains that, “volume deployment is the only setter of standards. Ubiquity trumps policy, just about every time.”Mr. McAllister, in Confronting the future of Web standards, points to the browser as an example. First, Netscape scraped up market share to become the clear leader and after peaking made way for the next natural monopoly, that being IE, of course. “How would our attitude toward monopolies change if we accepted that natural monopolies, rather than open standards, might sometimes be the best way to push technology markets forward?” McAllister asks. Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry