I'm not convinced it is just coming to a head now. I've seen automatic/forced formatting on projects at least as far back as 2000, when I entered the workforce.
The ones I've used for java have been consistently bad though. Autoformat as a commit hook leads to ugly code. Granted, I mean "bad" as in "gets ya 75% of the way".
Yes, forced/automated based on that company standards. I'm referring more to universal.