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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree that forced interoperability will somehow make they emergence of "winner-take-all"-style tech giants less likely, and I think the last ~25 year history of the Internet proves that.

I mean, in the late 90s everyone was talking about how the Internet would "democratize information", because anyone could become a content publisher from their garage. The story then was about how "the power" was concentrated in huge media companies, and the Internet would change that.

But when the barrier to entry is tiny, and indeed the barrier to switching is so low, it means that any competitor that is even just a tad better than the other guys will vacuum up all the business. It's indeed actually this more open framework that leads to higher concentrations of wealth and power, not the other way around.

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I'd say that it didn't really happen that way. What happened was that they would be interoperable initially, the other clients would get neglected as the dominant client vacuumed up half of the business, then when the dominant client reached a certain size, it would close. The neglected clients wouldn't be able to pick up the people resentful that the dominant client closed because of their fewer features, more difficult (and less opinionated) UI, and the loss of half of the user network. Attrition happens among the holdouts, they switch to the dominant client, and development that was once slow on the other clients stops dead. Then the dominant client starts asking for your firstborn and gets contracts with the CIA.

I'd submit that it's the closing that's the problem, not the openness. Openness tends to support a power law distribution of clients. One or two will dominate, but there will be a dozen that are significant.

The problem is that the open protocols which were initially used by the dominant client to achieve its dominance later became closed when they "seamlessly" forced their users onto a closed protocol. OSS licenses solve the open code issue to varying degrees but has largely fell flat on the issue of open protocols. So if coopting IP-law (aka OSS licenses) is the wrong approach, what is the correct tool to address this problem? Would other legal concepts like like contracts help? Something else?

Open wouldn't hurt, but I'd submit that price, specifically "free", is the bigger problem. It doesn't really matter which platform is dominant when they're all advertisement driven.

If our data became worthless, because of say, regulation on its use and a right to be forgotten, then we'd see more than just "one business model under different names".

100% agree. I also observed that some time ago, many platforms would use interoperability as a growth tools (ex: Facebook with 3rd party apps/games, Google with the 3rd party cookies, Apple with iOS APIs) and then, when they reach critical mass, they would close down and become closed gardens.

Watching all the preparations for the Open Banking regulations here in Brazil (still not in place fully). The concept is sound, as the data belongs to the user, not the bank/platforms, so banks/platforms should enable this data to freely flow (on the user command) to other platforms.

I think forced interoperability might have a good effect on that world, and also it seems to foster innovation by lowering the barriers of entry but I don't really know the effects on investment and VC money when you eliminate an effective competitive barrier.

it is difficult to stop the "winner-takes-all" economic dynamics from playing out, but interoperability does allow for small competitors to emerge in niche markets and through technological innovation bite off substantial markets. (AMD uses interoperability to compete with Intel.)

and ¿por qué no los dos, interoperabilidad y antimonopolio?

Completely agree. I'm in favor of interoperability for its own benefits (it's not without issues but thank God I can mostly depend on USB-C on all my devices these days), but just pointing out that interoperability as a counter to wealth/power concentration is insufficient.

It's less about wealth/power concentration and more about the ability to upset that wealth/power concentration.

Yes, for example if Myspace, Facebook, Google+, and all the open alternatives had all been interoperable, it would have been less likely for one of them to become a monopoly on the friends/wall/timeline segment.

> just pointing out that interoperability as a counter to wealth/power concentration is insufficient

Interoperability moves the world towards less concentration of wealth and power. So it's a step in the right direction.

"Better" is a multi-dimensional measure and people have very different preferences for what constitutes "better". The source of the winner take all dynamic is network effects. Because of those, everyone agrees that the "better" platform is the one that everyone is on, which inevitably causes everyone to use that same platform, even if they would have different preferences but for the number of people on it.

Not quite. Yes, network effects are important, but if that were the only important thing, then Facebook would be the only social media site. The opposing dynamic is that it's not hard to be on multiple sites at the same time. So if there's a site that meets my definition of "better" and has critical mass among the people I'd like to connect with it, it can compete. Each new generation gets its own social network because it has no interest in connecting with the squares on Facebook.

> Each new generation gets its own social network

So instead of accelerating progress we get one monopoly every 20 years (and some people splitting their attention, and friendship groups, and exposure to surveillance, between multiple incompatible sites).

That's not as reassuring as you might think it is.

I wouldn't call it reassuring, but it is the pattern so far. What gives me hope is that we don't have a single unassailable monopoly. Instead, we get a chance, every five years or so, to choose something better. We just might figure out how to deal with this.

"Winner-take-all" giants are not the problem. The problem is when something is strictly better (price, features, UX, performance or security) but can't win due to properties that are not inherent to the solution like network effects.

What is your claim? I don't think that the dynamics of tech giants are being properly accounted for in your example. Walled gardens are properly anticompetitive. You can't just go and iterate on facebook and expect to "suck up all of the business".

> I mean, in the late 90s everyone was talking about how the Internet would "democratize information", because anyone could become a content publisher from their garage.

Well, to be fair, this did happen. People today are better informed than ever. It worked so well, that classical media was (is?) dying. But what people forgot to mention was that money will still drive society, that people still cannot know everything and make failures, as people also will still manipulate others for whatever reason.

The world has become better, but it still remains flawed. After all, nothing will ever be perfect.

> and indeed the barrier to switching is so low

the cost of switching is not low though, exactly for lack of interoperability

if a user moves from a platform to another one, the user has to start from scratch because all of the contacts, social interactions and content are locked behind walled gardens

> I mean, in the late 90s everyone was talking about how the Internet would "democratize information", because anyone could become a content publisher from their garage

Well, it did democratize disinformation.

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