if i'm an indie developer who thinks he can make money by selling apps on the Google Play Store, i put in a ton of work and then see little or no financial reward. i've made Google's Android platform a bit more attractive (because it now lists my incredibly beautiful tip calculator for free to all Android users). who is the greatest fool here?
In the case of a single indie developer making an app for a single app store, it seems the developer is the greater fool, since they are turning their work into a commodity, when they should be turning their complement --- the app store --- into one.
Perhaps the route for the indie developer to actually see the financial reward is to make sure their app is available on every app store. ... or maybe they need to skip the app stores entirely to keep 100% of the sales.
It's the other way around; the commoditizing actor is that "greater fool", and others can then join in commoditizing the market out of pure self interest as consumers of the good. The agent which is commoditizing its complements is most important as a first-mover and solver of coordination problems.