Sep

27

Walled Gardens Foster Innovation

September 27, 2007 |

I just saw this piece on MSNBC arguing that ‘walled gardens’ actually foster innovation and that Apple made the right choice in clamping down on third-party development for the iPhone. The author uses Japan’s iMode as an example.

There is so much wrong with this idea, I don’t even know where to start. The guys at Techdirt tackled some of it:

Hazlett also seems to ignore the longer term history of most walled garden platforms. They may have initial success by creating a limited sandbox, but almost all of them eventually suffer as people go in search of more open and more innovative platforms. That’s what happened with AOL. It’s also partly what caused i-mode to stumble when it was unable to keep up with the innovation of others in the space. So, yes, it’s true that mandatory openness may not make sense, but it’s a huge leap to go from there to saying that walled gardens promote innovation. Walled gardens simply leave open the opportunity for someone else to innovate a more open solution.

p.s. “The Technology Liberation Front” summed up the article - no commentary whatsoever - how does this end up on Techmeme?


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