Reply to post: Re: Does anyone think this is a good thing?

Re: Does anyone think this is a good thing?

surely choice is a good thing?

Choice exists, but that doesn't mean people will take it and create diverse and roughly equal ecosystems and markets. So you have IoS, Android (and derivatives like Cyanogenmod), Windows, you have Blackberry, Ubuntu, Firefox. If you search hard enough you might find Tizen, Sailfish and a few others. But the reality is that most people perceive only a choice between Android and Apple.

One of the biggest killers of choice is "free" software. So Microsoft destroyed the browser market by bundling IE "free", with negative consequences still being felt thirty years later. The same vile company did the same thing with its mail client, and again the negative impacts (of lower choice and lower quality in the market) are still seen decades later. The ongoing cr@pness of Android with regard to updates and security is a result of the "free" nature of Android (who will bother to support something they aren't being paid to support?). Adobe Reader, Flash Player, both "free" and infamously cr@p.

At the root of the problem of "free" are three simple issues: 1) that new entrants are unable to create any revenue stream to give them traction thus crushing variety, 2) the lack of successful new entrants reduces pressure on incumbents to innovate and maintain, and 3) the lack of revenue streams from user-choosers reduces the incentive to keep the dominant "free" products secure and up to date.

Unfortunately "free" presses an evolutionary button in most of us, some sort of scavenger instinct that over-rides common sense, and makes us think that we are getting something for nothing. Not sure how you can undo that.