This is SUCH an invitation to rant
I'm not sure what I think about this trend in business. It's maybe related in some big way to patents and how intellectual property law is taking shape in modern business, but on the other hand there does seem to be something "evil" in it.
There is a very similar thing that happened with cordless tools. Most of the tool companies buy their motors from Johnson and their batteries from Panasonic. Most of the tool companies are actually owned by one of a few conglomerates - Stanley owns Black and Decker which owns DeWalt, Delta, Porter-Cable etc.; TTI in Hong Kong owns Milwaukee, AEG, Ryobi etc.; Bosch owns something like 350 subsidiaries, and the list goes on. While there is definitely a trend towards more affordability with power tools, the downside is that to get truly great tools from an innovative company, you have to pay 2-3 times as much like Hilti, Festool or some other small specialized brands. Mostly the only difference between them at this point is whose Johnson is bigger.
If the same One World trend takes over in test equipment, the only real difference between brands will be which market segment the parent companies decide to conquer with which brand at what price range. Sad.