Ecosystems Evolve (Premium)

Ecosystems matter, but ecosystems can also be used to lock you into a particular vendor’s products and services. And this is a particularly serious problem with abusive Big Tech companies, so it’s wise to enter into these things with open eyes. And an exit strategy.

I originally intended to write a single article on this topic, but it’s grown into a beast of sorts, and so I’ve decided to break it up into separate posts. Here, I look at how ecosystems evolve. And future posts will focus on individual ecosystems, and how I have, or have not adopted them.

Let’s go back in time a bit.

When Apple launched the iTunes Store, one of the core components of this platform was the FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies that protected purchased songs from being stolen, helping the record companies make the shift to digital music. This DRM also helped Apple, of course, because customers were unlikely to jump ship to rival music platforms if they’d have to rebuy their music.

But DRM is no longer a concern with legally purchased music these days, and you can now freely use any music you’ve purchased from Apple or other sources anywhere you wish. Some would likely credit this freedom to the rise in music streaming services, but that’s not really the case: Apple dropped DRM from iTunes music in 2009. But whatever the reason, this is an interesting example of how a single change can have a major impact on those who have adopted a particular ecosystem: this is one less way in which Apple, in this case, can lock in customers.

The shift away from DRM in digital music naturally led to questions about whether other major content types—eBooks, audiobooks, and digital video—might one day follow suit. That hasn’t happened yet, but we do have a much more recent example of a similar shift: thanks to the rise of the Matter smart home standard, customers will no longer have to hunt and peck for devices that are compatible with the smart home infrastructure they’ve adopted.

Matter began life as something called Connected Home over IP, or CHIP, about three years ago, and the reason it, ahem, mattered from the very beginning is that all of the major players in this industry—Amazon, Apple, and Google—were onboard from the start. Interestingly, the nuts of bolts of Matter appear to have started largely with Google, which otherwise seems to have almost checked out with its smart home initiatives in recent years: the underlying protocol began as Google Weave, and Matter’s IoT mesh capabilities began as Google Thread. But for the advantages promised by this standard, the biggest to me, is interoperability, that ability to seamlessly switch ecosystems.

As a Microsoft follower, it’s hard not to wonder how different the world might be had Matter arrived in time to save Cortana. But today, it ensures that all compatible devices will work with whatever smart home infrastructure you choose now or in the future, whether it comes from Amazon, Apple, or Google, or from Samsung or any other company.

The impact of this is breathtaking and should have as big an impact as did removing DRM from digital music. A Samsung Smart Things enthusiast, for example, will no longer need to look up whether a particular device will work with their system; instead, they can just look for Matter compatibility and will have a much wider range of choices as a result. And should that person later decide to go all-in on Apple, no worries: all of that gear will work with HomeKit as well.

Matter is specifically interesting as an ecosystem but more generally it’s also interesting as an example of how ecosystems can evolve in a positive way. Smart home technology use has skyrocketed in recent years, but the introduction of Matter should unleash a crazy new era of unrestrained growth. Now, the makers of smart home products and services no longer need to worry about supporting the myriad of platforms and protocols that each of the big infrastructures support. They can just target one standard.

Some won’t like this comparison, but I see this as being very similar to Microsoft’s move to adopt the Chromium web rendering engine in Edge as a de facto standard, a move that has led to dramatic growth in the use of that product. Mozilla, meanwhile, has foolhardily dug in its heels in refusing to adopt Chromium, and it is instead maintaining its own inferior web renderer, which is slower and less compatible than Chromium, despite the organization’s diminished resources. And usage in that browser, predictably, has nose-dived and will soon be inconsequential.

I know this is controversial to some, but I don’t get it: the web renderer is exactly the right place for browser makers to standardize because developers will no longer need to waste time reimplementing the same technologies for different browsers, but slightly differently and thus incompatibly in many cases. With the web renderer problem solved, those developers can instead focus on differentiating on user experience. (Microsoft has possibly gone too far in embracing this reality in recent years.) And those creating web apps and sites have only one major render to target—well, two: thanks, Apple—which likewise frees them to focus on the service they’re offering.

More to the point for users, the audience that really matters, browser makers standardizing on Chromium—and on related technologies like Progressive Web Apps (PWA)—makes individual browsers less sticky, meaning that it is easier for users to jump ship and adopt another browser if they find it to offer a superior user experience. Those choosing between Chromium-based browsers like Brave, Edge, Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi no longer need to worry about whether one of them will render webpages differently than the others.

That said, some browsers, in particular Brave, my browser of choice, do offer performance benefits because of their integrated anti-tracking and ad-blocking features, a great example of a superior user experience in a browser that’s based on the same underlying renderer as its competitors. But if Brave ever coughs up a hairball or a competitor makes a better product, which is hard to imagine, switching to another Chromium-based browser will be seamless.

And that, ultimately, is what I’m always looking for. No matter the ecosystem.

More soon.