Technology companies were really the ones to drive new protocols, and beat the proprietary protocols in the open market.

There were a lot of proprietary "information superhighway" projects by various companies, that were all made irrelevant by the success of the web.

Sure, and new companies will arise to develop and use open protocols if that's incentivized, but as long as not just attention or eyeballs, but capturing as much user activity and generated content as possible, is monetizable pretty directly (customize ads; feed your ML models to gain competitive advantage over those without the same reach into users' lives, and sell your ML capabilities), I think we're in for more of the same, even if we shuffle the chairs around.