We are only stuck if nobody thinks it’s worth creating an alternative. The ‘duopoly’ has only existed for around 5 years so far. It’s bizarre to consider regulating such a short lived phenomenon instead of encouraging new entrants, particularly when there are so many deep pocketed companies that want a piece of the market.
We’re not talking about a random video game company. We’re talking about Epic, a multi-billion dollar transnational enterprise that could easily afford to invest the time and money Apple and Google did to build their platforms.
Epic is vastly more profitable now than Apple was when they developed the iPhone. Let’s not deceive anyone that they are some small games company.
If you want to guarantee that we continue with the duopoly, the best way to do that is to take away the incentive for companies that could compete, to actually do so, by giving them a piece of the duopoly’s revenue stream.
Obviously not. It’s not a protection racket.
I’m suggesting that it would be better for consumers if we had more competition at the platform level - then we wouldn’t have a duopoly, and we would have more pressure for the platforms to compete an innovate.
You list a bunch of technologies that have already been developed and can be integrated. I said it would take a billion dollars, so we’re on the same page.
> because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
Don’t be silly. Popular apps are available on more than one platform.
Yes, there would be exclusives - games especially, but that is no different to how it is now.
For all your complaining, you seem to be arguing very hard that we should be stuck with the duopoly you claim to dislike.
We deserve better than forcing both users and developers alike to deal with a bunch of additional middlemen within the duopoly.