Re: New internet law needed...
@Eddy Ito,
Marvellous post. To add to it, it's also worth pointing out that Betamax remained a viable thing for those who wanted it long after VHS "won". They've only just stopped making the tapes.
The phone market is seems to be more about ensuring that there is no choice. What we need is open hardware standards, something that has given choice in the PC market. Android is just about viable as an open OS, despite Google's gouging of the market with their proprietary Play Services binary blob. If Google take Android proprietary (they're developing their own kernel it seems) then the phone market is doomed. Google, Apple, or go hang.
Google may be about to cock it up; they're already being probed in Europe for anticompetitive practices in their control of the Android market. They could cop a big fine from that and be forced to give Play Services away for free, without let or hindrance. But if they take Android proprietary and shut out everyone else, even the myopic competition authorities in the USA can't fail to spot the problem with that. Bell got broken up, IBM nearly so. It's getting closer to time to do this same with Google.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
