@Em0nM4stodon duopolies is just a workaround for the anti-monopoly laws. If Android or Windows Phone did not get successful, Apple would be in real trouble. So it is very likely they needed the second option to exist to make sure they are safe from government action.

Before, when companies got big, they were split. But their lawyers have learned, so now they all work to make sure there is always a duopoly.

The worst now is web browsers, where so many think they have a choice. Whilst in reality there are only 2.5 viable options. Saying Edge, Opera, Chrome, Brave, and Vivaldi are different browsers is like saying Ubuntu and Fedora is different operating systems.

@Em0nM4stodon Quite possibly this is the outcome that capitalism drives us to.

@Em0nM4stodon How do you define "popular" and "accessible" in the context of desktop OS?

If you ask Wikipedia, Windows has 71% market share? Does this mean, we can conclude, there's only one popular OS as it's used by ⅔ of desktop users.

However, this excludes the use as a server OS. Also, this doesn't take into account what types of people use which desktop OS as this is also a very important aspect involved in the purchase decision.

@Em0nM4stodon The number 2 looks oddly specific. We might need to understand what's going on before solving the problem.

Is having only two alternatives remaining a natural results of a capitalist market, or is it due to anti-monopoly laws?

Or perhaps something else entirely? I only have a physics degree not an economy one.

@Em0nM4stodon Have you considered how we arrived at this situation? All the items listed have been around a long time, tested by the fire of market demand. Wishful thinking does not a product make, although I suppose these days you could vibe code any tech you can dream up.

But will it serve and sell?

@Em0nM4stodon Alternatives do exist. The only thing they need is more visibility. Even if they're good, their usefulness often depends on how many people use them. Sadly, big popular competitors have the resources to limit their reach and keep them from growing 😥

@Em0nM4stodon we need more than two people who care about all this.

@Em0nM4stodon We need actual ecosystems. This is one of the things I love about Linux/Unix systems (although it feels like it's changing a bit lately, which sucks!) If a core Windows system component has a bug or vulnerability, you either stop using Windows or you sit around waiting for a patch. But if a core component of your Linux system has an issue you can probably just swap it out with an alternative. It's not just a diversity of different operating systems, it is an operating system that is internally diverse as well!

Monocultures always breed disease and decay. We need a diverse tech stack that can evolve and grow to meet our diverse needs and let us cobble together a solution to every new challenge.

@Em0nM4stodon If the giant mega corporations don't have one 'competitor' it's not a monopoly 😉

@Em0nM4stodon the inevitable outcome of capitalism

@Em0nM4stodon on browsers I think we’ve got 3 (Safari being the third). On cloud services I’d guess that OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud are all comparable in market share?

Agree overall with the thesis though.

@Em0nM4stodon not only more options, but also have them work together easily.

@Em0nM4stodon And we need at least one not-for-profit of each - I'm starting to think the Wikipedia Foundation model is the way forward.

@Em0nM4stodon not to be a downer, but

its capitalism

any competitors will be purchased or crushed because they don't have the same amount of capital as the two biggest players

even in the case of a triopoly, like games consoles, if all three agree to put up prices you've got nowhere to go

the state used to be an opposing force and make an effort to break up monopolies/duopolies/triopolies but the days of doing that seem over. everyone works for corporate donors

we need more than 2 political parties

@Em0nM4stodon Back when there was a ~€200M euromillions jackpot, my friends asked me what I would do if I won. I said "try to launch a new browser, but it might not be enough money". They laughed. I wasn't joking.

@Em0nM4stodon The duopolist reality is the closest law allows to a monopoly, so this is what we get. And duopolies operate similar to monopolies: use scale to crush or gobble up all smaller players.
There should be laws based on “guaranteeing healthy competition”. Not minimal laws on “preventing the worst”…

@Em0nM4stodon

Will you join me in making Europe a better place? I have just signed a petition: Don’t let Big Tech lobbyists exploit our data!. This is an issue I really care about. Will you sign too?

https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-10-trial-dpc-ireland-petition-2-EN

@Em0nM4stodon who is the "we" here? most of these things are not designed for us. they are there to make money. having more of them would not help that.

"we" need things that are designed for us to use, not to make money.

anything centralised can be bought up and commercialised.

@Em0nM4stodon

Email and messaging have decent E2EE standards with multiple open implementations and self-hosting solutions.

They don’t belong to this particular list.

@Em0nM4stodon key to this is ditching the 'ecosystem thinking'.

It's fine to have different apps for different jobs, you don't need it all "under one roof" or "in one basket".

@Em0nM4stodon What if things just didn't compete with each other and instead work together to achieve a connected goal

Australia is a prime example of how duopolies don't work. They're an illusion of choice. An illusion of competition.

@Em0nM4stodon We need to *buy* diversity, if that's the over-arching system we're working with. That means we also have to tolerate diversity, a.k.a. bugs/adjustments from our people who are doing just that with their communication devices.

I'm not sure if we're too anxious, too driven, or too poor, but no matter the sphere, breadth requires latitude... pretty much by definition.

(I'm going Pine64 (mobile) as soon as some network flexibility, or rather, affordability, lets me do it.)

@Em0nM4stodon Define "accessible". I have access to 3 popular and accessible types of mobile OSes, for example. And the desktop field was expanded this year into a third option that will be firmly established in another half decade.

(Technically there's also two more accessible types of browser here, but nobody would call them popular... 🤣)

For cloud services, there are now three main popular ones here (the two you cite not being available here, for all practical purposes).

@Em0nM4stodon @servo https://servo.org/ just recently released version 0.0.1 so soon™ we could have browsers that are not Firefox or chromium based.

@Em0nM4stodon i disagree, we need less energy hungry hallucination centers

@Em0nM4stodon Full agreement. We need more choice and competition in most areas of technology.

@Em0nM4stodon

I've been feeling this so much lately. When Coke and Pepsi both go high-fructose corn syrup, you're getting HFCS.

When Apple and Google agree that you're getting ads in your phone OS, you're getting ads in your phone OS.

When Apple and Microsoft agree that you're getting AI in your OS, you're getting AI in your OS.

I've spent the last 10 months getting decent at #FreeBSD and porting an homage NeXT-like desktop from Linux to it. Because I want NeXT clarity, dock, file manager, and Objective-C (and, since we must, FSF and GNUStep), no ads, no AI in my business.

(Collaborations apppreciated!)

@Em0nM4stodon Similar to winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post election systems, I think any market system that allows unlimited acquisition will end up with at most two dominant players in every field.

Without regulation outside of market forces, any company with a competitive edge is likely to remove further competition by buying out its competitors, or leveraging its existing portfolio to force competitors out of the game. Given enough time, at most two companies will own everything.

@Em0nM4stodon Why does the average person need a cloud service at all?

@Em0nM4stodon
We need shared standards but diverse implementations.

@Em0nM4stodon Android, IOS are both crap. Windows and mac osx are both crap as is chrome os.

Linux is decent but underutilized. Pity...

I wish human beings weren't so "I WANT THIS NOW"

Otherwise windows would have dropped to like 10% by now with all their evil abuses.

@Em0nM4stodon I suspect that enduring change towards this is likely to rely on people supporting, creating and donating (time and money!) to collectives like #Framasoft. (Thinking of that, perhaps I should envision a career change and start/join one of these in my country of residence...)

@Em0nM4stodon I suspect there are tech-economics at play too. I feel generational in defaulting to writing fresh code first, later looking for a library to use instead.

Similarly with applications - why write or use a new one when a familiar one is mostly okay?

The more complex the program the greater I'd expect that pattern to hold.

In the past there were awareness or platform gulfs between solutions, but the massive network effect of modern information sharing has changed that.

@Em0nM4stodon The US has encourage monopoly for way to long. @pluralistic is frighteningly correct in his assessments!

consolidation leads to enshitification!

@Em0nM4stodon all of those things exist .....