IMO we should celebrate that podcasts have managed to remain an open standard for so long. All of the open standards we have, are basically a historical accident: HTTP, SMTP, etc.

It's really easy for open standards to be killed by big companies, and it's impossible to create a new, open standard and get adoption when big companies already own the space.

I will not listen to podcasts on Spotify, because Spotify cannot be allowed to own podcasts like Youtube owns video.