I'm wondering if this trend of moving to proprietary protocols is because of business or because of technology. And it's not just messaging either.
File storage are moving from standard calls like fopen() to using the Dropbox API or Google Drive API.
Phone calls are moving from device-agnostic copper wire to Skype or Google Hangouts.
Taxis are moving from wave your hand to proprietary Uber API to proprietary Lyft API.
But then again, back in the day, competing products in a single market (e.g. Zip Drives vs. LS-120) were still sufficiently similar that it was possible to use a single API to access both (e.g. fopen()). Nowadays, competing products in the same market (e.g. Dropbox vs. Google Drive) are so different in implementation and feature set that it's inherently difficult to come up with a single extensible standard that covers both.
So are we now in an age where everything will remain proprietary for a few decades due to technological limitations?
It's so hard not to give a skeptics answer to this. When one hears FB, et al, talking about how many users they have, one can't help but think this is all business.
File storage are moving from standard calls like fopen() to using the Dropbox API or Google Drive API.
Phone calls are moving from device-agnostic copper wire to Skype or Google Hangouts.
Taxis are moving from wave your hand to proprietary Uber API to proprietary Lyft API.
But then again, back in the day, competing products in a single market (e.g. Zip Drives vs. LS-120) were still sufficiently similar that it was possible to use a single API to access both (e.g. fopen()). Nowadays, competing products in the same market (e.g. Dropbox vs. Google Drive) are so different in implementation and feature set that it's inherently difficult to come up with a single extensible standard that covers both.
So are we now in an age where everything will remain proprietary for a few decades due to technological limitations?