Great article! I have been meaning to write an article like this and the author raises a lot of points that I would make. But my assessment of why we don't have more centralization is pretty simple:
"Consumers don't care"
The concept in the real world is simple: "If I want something I go to store x and buy it". Translating that concept in the digital world is super easy with centralization:
- Want to watch a video: go to YouTube
- Want to buy something: go on Amazon
- Want to host large amounts of files, buy S3 space
Even podcast, a technology I love and have been using for is in danger of becoming more proprietary. If you look at promotional material podcasts you'll often find statements like "listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts" as if they are the providers of podcast. But Apple doesn't even host podcasts (yet)
We could have all of these things without centralization but just imagine the sales pitch for a RSS/BitTorrent backed video service with an open API and multiple competing frontends.
And in the example of YouTube centralizing everything (hosting, distribution and presentation) has great benefits for them (YouTube) so why would they not do it?
This is the important part that gets missed. The decentralized service (or open service, etc) needs to be significantly better than the alternatives to get traction.
While I think this is broadly true, there are hidden costs that normal consumers undervalue.
Like having the video and music and ebook (and VR headset!) you've paid for (and therefore think it belongs to you) arbitrarily removed or rendered inoperable with no recourse. If that happened with a DVD it'd be considered theft. Most normal people just don't think that can happen, or assume that if it did the legal system would be on their side, but it has and it does.
Ultimately, while I'd like to see more use of decentralized systems and API standard systems and federated systems, it's more likely that the biggest problems with centralized systems will be addressed ultimately through regulation, once the legal system catches up.
I guess the question is how to make profit on the backend. I'm not sure this is fairly obvious. I mean YouTubers can still do their sponsorships, but what about the people that run nodes? Use whatever interface you want, but how does the infrastructure hosts make money? I think this is something bitcoin (partially) solved by mining but there's still a non-obvious solution here.
"Consumers don't care"
The concept in the real world is simple: "If I want something I go to store x and buy it". Translating that concept in the digital world is super easy with centralization:
- Want to watch a video: go to YouTube - Want to buy something: go on Amazon - Want to host large amounts of files, buy S3 space
Even podcast, a technology I love and have been using for is in danger of becoming more proprietary. If you look at promotional material podcasts you'll often find statements like "listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts" as if they are the providers of podcast. But Apple doesn't even host podcasts (yet)
We could have all of these things without centralization but just imagine the sales pitch for a RSS/BitTorrent backed video service with an open API and multiple competing frontends.
And in the example of YouTube centralizing everything (hosting, distribution and presentation) has great benefits for them (YouTube) so why would they not do it?