Comment by _heimdall
1 month ago
The presumption that started this thread is that open standards are always good for competition. I think browsers are a good counter example where open standards led to three browser vendors, we have less competition rather than more.
Without open standards, we would need to pick a browser and provide for it.
If we needed to support another browser we'd need to provide a new solution built to its specification.
Open standards have allowed the possibility of multiple browser vendors, without making the life of browser consumers (i.e. developers and organisations providing apps and sites) a living hell.
Without this, we'd be providing apps and sites for a proprietary system (e.g. Macromedia Flash back in ancient history).
Furthermore, when Flash had cornered a market, it had absolutely no competition at all. A complete monopoly on that segment of the market.
It took Steve Jobs and Apple to destroy it, but that's a different story.
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The reasoning for only three engines, isn't the fault of open standards.
There are many elements of our economic system that prevent competition. Open standards is not one of them.
Browser engines are extremely difficult to start today because of the extensive, complicated, and ever growing list of specifications.
We had a web before open standards. It wasn't the best user experience and each browser was somewhat of a walled garden, but there was heavy competition in the space.
It was a literal hellscape before open standards.
I imagine there's most likely a subset of the population who believe that open standards are aligned conceptually to regulation, and that any form of regulation in a free market is wrong.
This subset of the population is misguided at best, and delusional at worst.
Open standards are essential.
2 replies →
Do you expect that browsers relying on closed standards would result in more competition under the same circumstances? You didn't demonstrate that.
My original demonstration wasn't actually the browser question. Auto manufacturers did show much higher levels of competition before standards and shared components.
Though it is worth noting that there was heavy competition in the browser space prior to the specs we have today. Part of the reason we ended up with a heavily spec-driven web is precisely because the high level of competition was leading to claims of corporate espionage, and it was expected that end user experience would be better with standards.
I absolutely agree the end user experience is better. I disagree that has anything to do with competition.
Without open standards, we would likely choose _one browser_, due to the economic cost of development.
One manufacturer would call all the shots for the _one browser_.
There would be zero competition until something calamitous happened to the manufacturer and the pendulum swung to a new monopolist.
We even have an example of how this plays out to fall back on; Macromedia Flash.