That can be one aspect of it, though I would argue that doesn't mean open standards are always better for competition.

I think you're also assuming the only competition that matters is long term. In the short term the potential for locking users into your own ecosystem can incentivize short term competition.

Long term competition seems like a good goal, but that assumption wasn't part of it at the beginning of this chain.

If we don't think about long term competition we end up in the scenario we are in now.

Two main players. No choice.

The web is open and is famously very competitive. We have three whole browser engines and only two of them are implemented by for-profit corporations whose valuations have 13 digits. I mean other ones exist, but the average modern developer claims it's your fault when something doesn't work because you use firefox or safari and also demands the browser rewrap all the capabilities the operating system already provides for you because they can't be assed to do the work of meeting users where they are.

In a world with over 3 billion people we have 'three whole browser engines'.

I don't want to be mean, but this isn't a great counterpoint.

I'm not sure what the number of people in the world has to do with whether an open standard does or doesn't promote innovation. The user asked for a case where an open standard didn't do that and I provided one. Whether you think it's a great counterpoint is entirely irrelevant to me.

But browser engines are entirely functional based on open standards!!!!!

This is the core proposition!

The benefit of open standards here, is to the consumers of these standards .. not the engines.

Open standards allow the consumers (websites / apps) to be able to benefit.

The presumption that started this thread is that open standards are always good for competition. I think browsers are a good counter example where open standards led to three browser vendors, we have less competition rather than more.

Without open standards, we would need to pick a browser and provide for it.

If we needed to support another browser we'd need to provide a new solution built to its specification.

Open standards have allowed the possibility of multiple browser vendors, without making the life of browser consumers (i.e. developers and organisations providing apps and sites) a living hell.

Without this, we'd be providing apps and sites for a proprietary system (e.g. Macromedia Flash back in ancient history).

Furthermore, when Flash had cornered a market, it had absolutely no competition at all. A complete monopoly on that segment of the market.

It took Steve Jobs and Apple to destroy it, but that's a different story.

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The reasoning for only three engines, isn't the fault of open standards.

There are many elements of our economic system that prevent competition. Open standards is not one of them.

Browser engines are extremely difficult to start today because of the extensive, complicated, and ever growing list of specifications.

We had a web before open standards. It wasn't the best user experience and each browser was somewhat of a walled garden, but there was heavy competition in the space.

It was a literal hellscape before open standards.

I imagine there's most likely a subset of the population who believe that open standards are aligned conceptually to regulation, and that any form of regulation in a free market is wrong.

This subset of the population is misguided at best, and delusional at worst.

Open standards are essential.

Did that hellacape include more competition between companies building web browsers?

With Microsoft bundling IE with the OS, no.

Do you expect that browsers relying on closed standards would result in more competition under the same circumstances? You didn't demonstrate that.

My original demonstration wasn't actually the browser question. Auto manufacturers did show much higher levels of competition before standards and shared components.

Though it is worth noting that there was heavy competition in the browser space prior to the specs we have today. Part of the reason we ended up with a heavily spec-driven web is precisely because the high level of competition was leading to claims of corporate espionage, and it was expected that end user experience would be better with standards.

I absolutely agree the end user experience is better. I disagree that has anything to do with competition.

Without open standards, we would likely choose _one browser_, due to the economic cost of development.

One manufacturer would call all the shots for the _one browser_.

There would be zero competition until something calamitous happened to the manufacturer and the pendulum swung to a new monopolist.

We even have an example of how this plays out to fall back on; Macromedia Flash.

Did you see my earlier comment? Car manufacturing for decades or so years didn't have open standards with regards to parts used or how they were built. We ended up with a huge number of competing car manufacturers compared to what we have today.

Didn't older cars rely on open standards making it possible to go to any repair shop? Or maybe it was effectively open stanards, i.e., nothing prevented you from learning how they worked and modifying them.

Nowadays, all cars became hostile to users thanks to the closed software: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/06/mozilla_vehicle_data_... I wouldn't call it "better competition".

Older cars could go to most mechanic shops because older cars were more simple. The fundamentals of how the cars worked were similar not because the companies collaborated on parts and designs but because they were comparatively simple and all were based on combustion engines that required certain components and physics to be similar.

Well, most. There were the odd steam powered and even early electric vehicles back then. I wouldn't expect either to roll into any mechanic shop in town and get service.