> We take for granted the inter-connectivity of most modern equipment, but to this day companies still try to create synthetic technology monopolies to cash-in. i.e. to sustain a tenuous service commodity out of something that has essentially been free since the mid 1990s.

This is why as a network engineer I always advocate for open standards everywhere I can to avoid vendor lock-in. The classic one is using OSPF instead of EIGRP on Cisco routers (or their other proprietary protocols). Nowadays this is much tricker with cloud computing and black box stuff like SDN/SDWAN.