Interesting, but it mostly boils down in my eyes to a government mandate to solve a collective action problem, followed by the market collapsing around the least functional solution until someone proved their solutions all sucked. The market recovered once information was available to allow the consumer to actually make informed choices and the products needed to actually start competing with a real metric. It's a good post though, and neatly outlines that there's a ton of interaction between government and the marketplace.
