“Platform” risk
eugenewei.com
eugenewei.com
AWS doesn't do this, because the second they cut off a customer based on their type of business (even if it competes with Amazon), they'll lose their marketplace credibility. Facebook, Twitter, and Apple have near monopolies, but AWS still has lots of competitors.
The article suggests that you don't have to worry as long as you're paying your platform for use. Against which there's a huge counter-example called Microsoft in the 90's. The real distinction between platforms and Platforms is the word 'monopoly' that you use, and that is prominently absent from the article.
But even that doesn't quite feel like a complete theory, because there are monopoly Platforms that are real utilities, like the electrical grid. PG&E doesn't embrace, extend and extinguish. Why not? How can we arrange for more healthy seeking of monopolies and less rentierism? Are those even well-posed concepts? There might be something more valuable than the OP in this direction.
Regulation?
One potential resolution to the question is that you can't, that PG&E's failure to grow is just a temporary failure of imagination. Rentierism is a weed that, uh, finds a way, to quote Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWeMvrNiOM). Under this worldview, a utility is merely a monopoly that nobody wants to compete with anymore -- for now. It has temporarily exhausted its growth/optimization curve, leading to predictable revenues. For a while the predictable revenues are divided between existing players (shareholders, govt, employees, etc.) in a stable equilibrium. But eventually, institutions that fail to grow (taxis) will run into hacks that do (Uber/Lyft).
An alternative solution would be that there is a distinction between good and bad regulations, perhaps that you have to weigh the size of the regulator against the size of the regulated industry. Taxi regulations were bad because they were suppressing a small industry. Regulation of large industries on the other hand, is more likely to do good than harm. Provided public attention can outlast private lobbying. That tension then becomes the new frontier for the eternal battle of public policy.
[1] More examples here: http://www.cloverfoodlab.com/blog/2008/09/05/licensing-and-o...; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj
And of course this is BOUND to happen. If its not AWS it'll be someone else. But it's inevitable.
They don't, but don't forget their recently released Dropbox (who use a bunch of AWS) competitor.
Facebook wants you to build apps in their walled garden -- which they own and will change the rules as they please. Google would love to buy your startup that looks like it might be huge -- so they can make you an employee and let your product either live or die in the Google ecosystem, not the market. Yahoo is willing to absorb that great business you're running -- so they can own your work and relationships and keep the eyeballs.
Comcast wants to provide internet service to your house -- as long as it can create some byzantine tiered billing system to obfuscate what you're getting and charge providers for getting it to you. All of the tech industry is now getting very politically savvy. Who is one of the top visitors to the White House? The Google guys. Political campaigns on the left -- but I suspect the right won't be far behind -- are more and more powered by tech money and tech volunteers. No matter how much "Don't be evil" you're able to swallow, people tend to see things from inside their own tiny worldview.
Just so I don't sound completely paranoid, note that platform risk is an issue even for purely technology platforms built on FOSS. Any time one set of folks build something and another set of folks use it, the two interests do not always align. Systems tend to become more and more complex and unwieldy. Users of the platform spend more time appeasing the platform architecture than they do providing value. It just gets worse when you add money to the mix.
However, it is possible to succeed. And the counterpoint is paypal and ebay. Most people don't remember that paypal was building their service inside of ebay and ebay was not at all friendly about it. In fact, ebay bought a rival payment company and tried to offer incentives to their sellers to switch from paypal. But paypal still won out. They key is to get major support from the platform's own users - like paypal did with ebay's sellers.
So it is possible to succeed on someone else's "p"latform.
The backstory (I worked at ebay in 2000) is that Billpoint (ebay Payments) was an ebay-Wells Fargo joint venture with a good CSR staff but no marketing funding and limited ebay integration. (I was laughed at when I asked if there was a mktg. budget for a billboard, or anything else.)
ebay used ebay Payments to learn about payment risk mgmt., then when they were comfortable bought Paypal.
In my ideal reality, we'd have an open Internet free of this kind of near-monopoly on specific types of content. Lots of small, federated, data feeds, and people free to move about between commercial and open options and interconnect regardless of who's hosting the content. But, that Internet is still pretty far off, and maybe getting farther away, as the biggest players build bigger walls to protect their data silos.
In the mean time, build something that at its core is yours. Build it out. Make it a following.