Quote Originally Posted by jcole View Post
More likely they didn't know what a serial bus was
Well, it's clear that the larger DB-25 connector would have been too clunky for handheld devices so something smaller was needed. Still that doesn't explain why there evolved so many different small connectors that had the same function.

Now I'm thinking it may have been more of a legal/patent/licensing scheme. People saw new growing revenue from small devices and tried to get a slice of that pie by tweaking a component's invention enough to get their own patent so they too could sell licenses. Keeping the term "universal" seems kind of stupid in retrospect.

I've heard criticisms of big pharma doing similar things by tweaking drug molecules to keep them from going generic.

It's all about the Benjamins. Yea, greed!