Apple and Google Won; We Lost.
Darwinism proclaims the idea of survival of the fittest. The creature best adapted to changing circumstances will be the one that lives and flourishes whilst the others will eventually die out. Evolution has been a competition since the dawn of time to see who will claim the next epoch and who will end up in car engines. It is not necessarily the best creature that survives, only the most adaptable.
With technology this mantra has also proven true. Long is the list of superior creations that have been pushed by the wayside in favour of a more adaptable competitor. Betamax was superior but more expensive than VHS. The Sega Dreamcast was more inventive than the PS2. EV’s originally lost out to the infrastructure of fossil fuels. The Pebble battery lasted days longer than the Apple Watch. Napster, had it been properly licensed could have upended the whole idea of software distribution; the list goes on.
In technology we often see an industry come down to a fight between two behemoths, like a corporate Godzilla-vs-Kong. It might have been Sega vs Nintendo as a kid that then became Windows vs Mac as you got older. Now, top of the evolutionary pile and still fighting it out we have the two victors: Apple vs Google.
But just as a lack of competition in the wild can lead to dead-ends, so can a lack of competition in the corporate world lead to a…
