

The Walled Garden Has Won - joshbert
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/12/the-walled-garden-has-won/

======
stcredzero
What people need to realize, is that there is a reason why the free-ranging
cowboy had to stop existing, all the cowboy-poetry about the sadness of barbed
wire fences notwithstanding.

 _More order means more economic activity._

If you have any knowledge about security and cryptography, and you start
planning out the security for a new kind of app, one keeps on running into
difficulties, one after another. It just occurred to me the other day that
these difficulties are just like the ones 3rd world businesspeople face. As
far as security goes, we are living with a poverty of infrastructure.
Basically, too much of the information infrastructure is broken, to the extent
that we can't do diamond-hard key management.

Secure medical information through the browser? People are in fear of
regulation sets like HIPPA, because browsers are one of the richest sources of
security holes! Private information? People say ridiculous stuff like "privacy
is dead" and young women just hope the pics their ex-boyfriends posted are
lost in the throngs of other evilly posted pics on the internet. It's
insanity. How is this any different than someone in the 3rd world trying to
build a widget delivery business, but finds that the roads are rotten, he
can't get parts for his trucks, and he has to bribe people to let his trucks
past, bribe people to let his warehouses be unmolested, and to get the
business license in the first place?

In terms of security, even the 1st world is like the 3rd world. The upshot:
whoever attempts building the internet's first mature security infrastructure
will have huge risks. Whoever succeeds will make billions of dollars. My
startup is doing precisely this. If you understand what I am saying, you can
email my username at gmail dot com.

Google gets it. This is what they're trying to do with Chrome. This is how it
will start. People will try to build little pockets, little pieces of
infrastructure. These are the walled gardens. Some will fail. Some will
succeed and even interconnect. Eventually, workable networks will _securely_
connect the entire world.

~~~
fierarul
You wrote a long post but could you perhaps expand it even more? Perhaps in an
article?

I don't see how "more order means more economic activity": if anything, I
associate "more order" with more bureaucracy and higher barrier to entry for
new economic agents.

~~~
stcredzero
_You wrote a long post but could you perhaps expand it even more? Perhaps in
an article?_

Actually, I'm thinking of doing exactly that.

 _I don't see how "more order means more economic activity": if anything, I
associate "more order" with more bureaucracy and higher barrier to entry for
new economic agents._

It's contextual, actually. I presume you are commenting from an industrialized
nation. For you, more order is going to mean more bureaucracy, more friction,
and less economic activity.

For someone living somewhere, where the rule of law doesn't even apply, to the
point where it's hard to maintain basic infrastructure, there isn't enough
order yet. In that case, more order = more economic activity.

I'm saying, in the context of digital security, the Internet as a whole still
suffers from a poverty of infrastructure that inhibits many kinds of
transactions. There is tremendous risk and opportunity here for those daring
enough to do something about it.

------
Kylekramer
I guess with that loose of a definition, Android could be a walled garden. But
once you get past the broad strokes, the walled garden of "we have a kill
switch and could potentially use it for anything, but so far only for security
purposes" and the walled garden of "we approve everything unless you exploit a
security hole and have blocks apps just because it was in our interest" are
very different.

There is always a balance of security and freedom. To this point, I'd say
Google has erred on the side of freedom. And at least with Android, if Google
were to go rogue in a doomsday scenario, we could always fork it.

~~~
TillE
The most important point about Android is that apps can be installed from
third-party sources just by toggling a switch in the settings on the stock
firmware.

While Google probably technically _could_ use the remote uninstall function on
an app not installed via their Market, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that
they would. And as you suggest, there already exists CyanogenMod and other
third-party firmwares; it's fairly easy to strip Android of any connection to
Google if you so desire.

------
trotsky
Post facto removal doesn't meet any reasonable definition of a walled garden
though. If it did, then the monthly push of the windows malicious software
removal tool would make windows a walled garden. Since Windows clearly doesn't
fit the definition of a walled garden, you really can't use the same
functionality as a reason to call Android one.

The only difference here is that it is harder to disable Android's remote
push/remote kill. As is noted though it would be relatively easy for
manufacturers or AOSP based projects to disable those market functionalities
or provide an alternative market. Presumably if they are given a reason to
want to some will.

------
fluidcruft
Re: Google's remote "kill switch" saving the day against DroidDream.

All the kill switch did was remove the horse after the soldiers had already
jumped out. But Google got super lucky and was able to also fool these
particular soldiers to commit suicide.

On Android phones /system is read only. To make changes there you have to get
root--then you can remount /system read-write and make modifications there.
DroidDream did that and installed a root shell in /system/bin/profile. To
remove the infection, Google used DroidDream's own root shell.

Now imagine DroidDream's /system/bin/profile didn't just accept any old
command directed at it by just anybody (perhaps simply using public key
cryptography). Could Google have removed from a non-rooted phone?

------
tel
I want to reset this perennial argument into new terms for a moment. Apple has
long branded itself not as a walled garden but instead as a "human focused
technology design" company. From this perspective you might instead see Walled
Garden as a symptom of a dominating human focus.

Once you're looking at human-driven innovation and technology-driven
innovation, you can start to see some major differences. Human-driven pulls
money whenever it brings high technology to people's lives in a more
synchronized fashion. Technology-driven pulls money when it invents something
so new it literally shifts the power structure into groups of those who have
it and those who don't.

I find it pretty liberating that human-focused innovation is having such a
renaissance right now. I don't feel so hurt if it's at a (possibly small,
globally) cost to technological innovation since Apple clearly optimizes for
psychology. I feel like real technological innovation can still happen as
well, but a walled garden acts as a filter that separates those who just made
the next poorly designed CRUD application from those who'll get bought.

I'll still add that it's a little scary since I have an engineering fear of
big monolithic entities like Apple and Google over well-organized, loose-
integrated, and smaller guys.

------
Estragon
So, you can root most android phones. Surely someone has figured out how to
disable Google's kill-switch once that's done?

~~~
liljimmytables
You don't even need to root it, just one tweak to your settings and you can
download an apk from anywhere you like. If you get your apks this way they
aren't market-managed and have no magic kill switch.

Market isn't so much a walled garden but a preferred vendor, in the same way
that a Debian repository is.

~~~
Estragon
Thanks for the information. Do you have a cite for the fact that non-Market
applications aren't subject to the kill switch?

------
KevBurnsJr
That quip about Kindle book deletion is rather like Borders saying "We're
going to sell you this book, but we reserve the right break into your house
and burn it whenever we like."

~~~
bl4k
no because you own the physical paper but only a license for the content

~~~
endgame
Which is exactly the problem. See also : <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-
to-read.html>

~~~
bl4k
ye but what I am saying is that the analogy isn't 100% correct. It is more
like going into your house and telling you that you aren't allowed to read the
book anymore

I didn't say I agree with it, that is just the way it works

------
kenjackson
The article doesn't mention Facebook, which seems like the front-runner to the
walled garden of eden. I can see Facebook doing their own browser and their
own phone at some point. The already have the core app store in place and
advertising platform. And of course they have the eyeballs.

Facebook becomes the internet you go to when you care about knowing who you're
dealing with. IMO this is bigger than Google/Chrome, iOS, or Android.

------
bergie
There is a more transparent and fair way to run quality assurance and
acceptance procedures. This is what we do at Maemo:
[http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/application_quality_assurance_in_l...](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/application_quality_assurance_in_linux_distributions/)

------
alanstorm
Nothing ever wins, pendulums just swing.

~~~
cageface
Thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis.

------
lukeschlather
>Not so long ago, people were outraged that Amazon could and did arbitrarily
delete books from users’ Kindles; last week they clamored for Google to
exercise essentially the same power.

There's a significant difference between code and data.

Similarly, when AOL lost to the open web, it wasn't because their code was
closed, it was because their community and their content was closed. In a
similar manner, iTunes needs to offer a web client if it wants to compete with
Amazon, Google, and the rest in the long run. Or at least make Android/WebOS
apps.

------
codyguy
..For now...

------
Xuzz
(For what it's worth, the popular jailbreak app SBSettings includes a switch
to disable Apple's iOS kill switch. I assume that rooted Android phones also
have that possibility.)

------
callumjones
I wouldn't say there's a winner just yet, it's still early days in the life of
smartphone OSes.

------
wrinklz
POS wordpress blog covers the entire first page of text to tell me that I have
JS turned off. I know that, dipshits, show me the damn blog...

~~~
tzs
What are you talking about? With Javascript disabled the only difference I see
is that the advertisement below the story is missing.

