In response to recent articles by Andy Clarke and David Baron, Alex recently said that the W3C cannot save us. The most significant point being made is that you cannot standardize the future, and you should not punish those who attempt to push the envelope through experimentation and invention.
In the late 90s, there was little in the way of web standards, but an amazing amount of progress and innovation. WASP and others heavily pushed browser vendors to properly implement HTML, CSS, and DOM standards. For the most part, they were successful with this effort, and with the effort of encouraging developers to use those standards.

