Bruce Eckel points out a key distinction between standards that work and standards that don't. He quotes an article about CORBA's decline and reduced it to the wonderfully clean and understandable:

A standards body should formalize existing practice, rather than inventing new practice without experience.

Yeah, Web Services fits into that mold, too. But maybe not quite as badly as CORBA... at least Microsoft and IBM and Sun are all at the same table on this one.