Walled Gardens Are Crumbling

Written by R. Scott Raynovich - Light Reading

Friday, September 21. 2007 at 02:00 AM EDT 3 comments

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Bizarrely, I once said at a tech conference that I liked walled gardens. Not sure what exactly I was thinking at the time. Not only does this make me sound like a real geek, but I've regretted saying it ever since. Reading A.L Friedman's post on the talks between Real Networks and Verizon about an internet-compatible music subscription service has me thinking about the walled garden concept again.

Why is it so much harder to find whatever you want on a mobile phone? Because they have created walled gardens through the implementation of proprietary data services and lobotomized web browsers that restrict access to a wide range of innovative Internet applications. (No JavaScript, XML, or Ajax for you!)

When I (mistakenly) declared I liked walled gardens, I believed that the premise was that walled gardens often work better, because the owner of the service has more control. A good example is cable TV: You don't have a whole lot of control over the content, but it works real well, and overall, is a really good product for what it does.

Walled gardens often come about through annoying monopolies. I recently cancelled my Comcast cable TV service after years and years of escalating prices and increasingly irritating customer service. I have replaced it with a triple-play fiber service (FiOS) from Verizon. There have been a few glitches, but overall, I've been happy. What's to be happy about? First of all, I'm saving $100 on digital HD cable service. Verizon basically tossed it in for free. Second of all? Well, it's like, liberating... I can choose.

Why'd I toss out Comcast? Eventually, I got sick of the walled garden. I got tired of them dictating the terms and the price. They were inflexible.

Not that Verizon's television service isn't a walled garden in itself, but it is at least offering it alongside a faster, wider open-broadband connection, and I now feel liberated from the monopoly. The best thing about it is that in the future, I could flip-flop between them, hopefully even playing them off of one another in a fun sort of consumer leverage. That's the beauty of capitalism at its finest. Comcast can no longer dictate the terms of our relationship, because I decided that the relationship was dysfunctional and packed my bags.

The walled garden concept is rooted in control, and nothing reinforces control more than a monopoly. Cable companies for years have been telling you exactly what you can watch, what you can't watch, and dictating to you the prices. Why, even such an idea as à la carte content was too radical for the cable industry, until just recently.

Now let's switch the channel to wireless data services: Same deal. Though, one could argue that wireless data is a much more competitive market than, say, cable television in 1995, it still has significantly more friction than something like a plain vanilla Internet service. Once you're on a mobile device you tend to be tied to the provider through a contract, the purchase of the device itself, and a phone number (the portability has gone a long way to eliminating that friction). There is the inherent feeling that "they got you." Thus, they can charge nice data fees for things like SMS, ringtones, and proprietary content services. They can abuse you when you call up customer service, because they know there's a lot of friction in your ability to leave. If the mobile device were truly and internet platform, you would just surf out to the most competitive service -- and chances are that it would be free.

Apple's iPhone has changed all that by pushing forward web standards into the mobile device world. Now, the iPhone itself is still a walled garden because of the tight terms that Apple dictates through its exclusive service provider relationships. But overall, it will push the industry to break down walled gardens, because it has opened up the possibility of access to all web applications through a standard web browser.

When it comes to digital media services, the ultimate downfall of walled gardens will be their inability to keep pace with the innovation, aggressive pricing, and liberated nature of applications on the open internet. Compelling media services and applications are being invented on the Internet every day. A single provider like Verizon, or even Comcast, can't keep pace with that innovation by forcing the consumer to choose their proprietary applications. The consumer deserves more choice.

The mobile operators will need to get in line and open things up. Their days owning the walled gardens are numbered. As for cable television? They're going to have to come up with a lot more compelling content and provide more flexibility for the consumer.