"Not so with the web. The web is a set of protocols and languages and file formats[...] Google, by virtue of having Chrome, invests heavily in the web itself"
Without a company like Google which functions like a public steward for the web there's little reason for anyone else to drive web development. The competitive market logic doesn't incentivize an open ecosystem because by definition there's no profit to be captured in it, it exists if you will because a benevolent player maintains it and makes money elsewhere.
An analog to this would be if you'd judge Red Hat's dominance in the commercial Linux space the same way and forced them to divest from the operating system market. There would be nobody stepping in, because there's no money in linux itself. It exists by virtue of a entity making money on adjacent markets and all the linux development happens because it's beneficial for them to drive adoption.
The only real alternative you could propose is straight up public funding, but a balkanized market is by its very logic not going to maintain the web, but vertically integrated alternatives, i.e. apps. It's something you can btw see in China which due to timing happened to leap frog over the open web and search and went straight to the hyper-competitive and for that reason proprietary world of platforms.
> An analog to this would be if you'd judge Red Hat's dominance in the commercial Linux space the same way and forced them to divest from the operating system market.
But it's not at all how the linux ecosystem looks. Redhat doesn't dominate linux distributions and they can't corral everyone into using their money-making services by making them default into their distribution.
"Not so with the web. The web is a set of protocols and languages and file formats[...] Google, by virtue of having Chrome, invests heavily in the web itself"
Without a company like Google which functions like a public steward for the web there's little reason for anyone else to drive web development. The competitive market logic doesn't incentivize an open ecosystem because by definition there's no profit to be captured in it, it exists if you will because a benevolent player maintains it and makes money elsewhere.
An analog to this would be if you'd judge Red Hat's dominance in the commercial Linux space the same way and forced them to divest from the operating system market. There would be nobody stepping in, because there's no money in linux itself. It exists by virtue of a entity making money on adjacent markets and all the linux development happens because it's beneficial for them to drive adoption.
The only real alternative you could propose is straight up public funding, but a balkanized market is by its very logic not going to maintain the web, but vertically integrated alternatives, i.e. apps. It's something you can btw see in China which due to timing happened to leap frog over the open web and search and went straight to the hyper-competitive and for that reason proprietary world of platforms.