| > I think the problem is more that the trend over the last 5-7 decades has been to privatise things. The private/public border is volatile and heavily contested and by all accounts will forever be a topic of political debate. But notice how unusual the context of web technologies: Its not that a private monopoly is controlling and selling some piece of web infrastructure (that might, instead, be opened to more competition, turned into a public good etc). No, what is happening is that a very specific business sector (advertising) is controlling universal communications infrastructure. A loose analogy would be if a single private oil company would manufacture and distribute all automobiles in circulation - for free, but securing that they can run on nobody else's energy. The conjectured "public-good" browser is not crowding out any private interests as there is no market for selling browsers. There is a market for advertising but its not competing for surfaces, it owns all surfaces. Guess what, in this terminally conflicted arrangement you would never see an electric vehicle. The highjacking of central infrastructure to serve narrow private interests will inevitably reduce innovation and welfare and any techie that is worth their title knows thats already the case. |
1) Google's model. They try to control all the ways that people discover goods and services, and then sell ads to the providers of services. Whether people are looking for electronics, flights, restaurants, contractors or nannies, they are going to use Google Search or Google Maps or another Google service to find it, and service providers need to pay Google to be discovered. Google is using ads to get a cut of every business transaction.
2) Apple's model: They try to control all the ways that people pay for things. For digital goods, that's the App Store and In-App-Purchases, for traditional things it's Apple Pay and Apple Card and Apple Cash. Apple is using payment services to get a cut of every business transaction.