alt Hacker NewsThis doesn't seem right to me. It is often in companies' best interests to adopt standards, but that is because it allows them both to have an optimized supply chain.
Car manufacturers today have a lot of standards that I expect would make competition from any new contenders harder not easier. Tesla would be an example of that, they did survive but the industry thought it was never going to work precisely because of all the standards and regulations required.
On the other hand, early car manufacturers didn't have standards and shared technology stacks. At that time new car makers popped up everywhere and we had a ton of competition in the space.
Open standards are good for the consumer and good for any features that require interoperability. It has nothing to do with competition though.
Sorry, but you're incorrect.
If a particular product is tied to a specific proprietary tech stack, then the consumer is also tied to specific suppliers. This is known as vendor lock in.
Microsoft used this approach with Internet Explorer back in the old days; ensuring that it provided proprietary elements and implementation, that would encourage developers to provide websites that only functioned using their browser.
Open standards allow choice.