This column discusses factors that can lead to the emergence of standards, and explores features that can both limit their initial emergence and accelerate their subsequent uptake. The author describes conditions that tend to lead to monopolies versus the shared development and diversity that push communities toward standards. The main factor that has been limiting the emergence of cloud standards to date has been the rapidly changing nature of the technology, and thus the low degree of technological simplification that can result from making standards-based choices among these technologies that themselves lead to interoperability and consumer choices among providers.