Rules for the Garden

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Article from Issue 252/2021
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There is this abiding faith within the Linux world that walled gardens and single-vendor control over global markets will eventually collapse under the weight of inefficiency. If you look at the history of the last 20 years, however, you would see a very different story.

Dear Reader,

There is this abiding faith within the Linux world that walled gardens and single-vendor control over global markets will eventually collapse under the weight of inefficiency. If you look at the history of the last 20 years, however, you would see a very different story. Just when the menace of the Microsoft monopoly began to subside, a whole new generation of walled gardens grew up around the mobile phone industry and the pecunious package managers we know as app stores. Apple, for instance, controls every aspect of their app store, forcing developers to agree to terms where Apple manages all the money and restricts the vendor's access to sales data and other background information. Google, owner of Android, is a little more open than Apple, but that isn't saying much. Critics contend that both companies stifle competition through their heavy-handed control.

Despite the excesses of the modern mobile app store, the case for any significant antitrust action within existing US law is not so clear. Apple, after all, has a relatively small share of the global cell phone market, even if they do exert monopoly-like control over the users who happen to fall into their walled garden. It is one of those cases where some direct and unambiguous legislation that leveled the playing field and created more competition would really help.

[...]

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