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.
🎯 "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."
🧱 "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."
🌐 "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."
⚠️ "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."
🔥 "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.
An Open Letter to Google regarding Mandatory Developer Registration for Android App Distribution
Open Letter to Google Regarding Mandatory Developer Registration for Third-Party App Distribution
OWA NEW REPORT 🚨
Apple’s interoperability “commitments” in the UK 🇬🇧 are a smokescreen:
👉 No obligation to share anything
👉 Broad excuses to say no
👉 Fees for APIs
👉 No public transparency
They can comply… and change nothing 😬
Bad for devs. Bad for users. OWA gives you the deep dive:
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/our-submission-to-the-cma-on-apples-ios-interoperability-commitments/
🧵👇️ (1/13)
Our Submission to the CMA on Apple’s iOS Interoperability Commitments - Open Web Advocacy
Our Submission to the CMA on Apple’s iOS Interoperability Commitments - Open Web Advocacy
The CMA has the opportunity to fix these issues with the DMCCA but they must actually use and enforce the powers they have been given.
🧵(12/13)
Keep Android Open