Ben DelarreApr 9
Open Web Advocacy

🔥 "Capable browsers, and the PWAs they support, hold the power to grow an ecosystem of applications that no gatekeeper can own or tax, based on standardised APIs that resist enclosure. But few outlets are connecting these dots for readers."

📖 Read: https://infrequently.org/2026/04/the-web-is-an-antitrust-wedge/

The Web Is An Antitrust Wedge

Armed with new powers to rein in the worst excesses of mobile's duopolists, regulators around the world are struggling to find their footing. The UK's CMA is only the latest to pose capitulation as success. Far from unlocking growth and dynamism, regulatory timidity is reducing enforcers' future room for manoeuvre and hampering home-grown competitors to Big Tech. Unleashing the web would fix a great deal of what's broken, but regulators are falling down on the job. It's time we spoke plainly about it.

Alex Russell
Apr 9 at 7:30amWeb
Show threadOpen Web AdvocacyApr 9
⚠️ "Open, interoperable, safe-by-default runtimes with standardised APIs threaten the foundations of this structure by breaking the duopolist's chokehold over software distribution. Browsers, and their core function of abstracting away the proprietary APIs of OS vendors, create a tax-free zone outside the grasp of the OS incumbents' mafioso App Store tactics."
Show threadOpen Web AdvocacyApr 9
🌐 "As it did twenty-five years ago, the web can unlock maximum change with the lowest risk, but regulators are falling down on the job, and tech reporters are not informing readers of the options or the stakes."
Show threadOpen Web AdvocacyApr 9
🧱 "By failing to acknowledge the power of the web to disrupt entrenched OSes (as demonstrated by the past 20 years of desktop computing), the press are failing to communicate the stakes of regulatory failure to enable browser competition."
Show threadOpen Web AdvocacyApr 9
🎯 "Regulators facing choices about where to invest scarce resources should foreground browser engine choice and web apps because they create mass behind their agenda and bring a powerful, pre-existing ecosystem to bear."
Show threadOpen Web AdvocacyApr 9
📚 Read the full article:
https://infrequently.org/2026/04/the-web-is-an-antitrust-wedge/
The Web Is An Antitrust Wedge

Armed with new powers to rein in the worst excesses of mobile's duopolists, regulators around the world are struggling to find their footing. The UK's CMA is only the latest to pose capitulation as success. Far from unlocking growth and dynamism, regulatory timidity is reducing enforcers' future room for manoeuvre and hampering home-grown competitors to Big Tech. Unleashing the web would fix a great deal of what's broken, but regulators are falling down on the job. It's time we spoke plainly about it.

Alex Russell
Show threadMichael VealeApr 9
@owa indeed, although PWAs are by far and away the most popular format for apps in China, which effectively constrains them to working within a duopoly of Weixin and Alipay. So need to take lessons from there.