Over a few hundred years, inhabitants used the gigantic palm trees around them as rolling surfaces on which to haul stones; they then used more trees to lever the stones into place on platforms. Competing chieftains built larger statues on larger platforms. Eventually, the last tree was gone and the island was covered only in grasses and shrubs, leading to starvation and even cannibalism. Diamond explains that there was no signal crisis:
“Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”
The Easter Islanders’ incremental march toward disaster is an apt analogy for Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s decision to keep Google Maps off the newly released iPhone 5, the latest of a series of steps toward control by powerful actors over users’ online behavior. The question is whether the pattern is clear enough for regulatory authorities to take action. (...)
Users of the iPhone whose maps application was swapped out when they upgraded to Apple’s iOS 6 platform have had a glimpse of what the carriers’ power could entail: Just as Apple chose to remove its reliable maps app that used Google (GOOG)’s data when the two companies’ business relationship became complicated, the cable companies can make services such as Netflix subject to data caps while exempting their own online video offerings. Users may be irritated, of course, but there’s nothing they can do about it.
Anil Dash, the co-founder of the media and technology consulting firm Activate.com, said last week that the move against Google Maps was the first time Apple had put “boxing out competitors” ahead of serving the interests of iPhone users. Similarly, a vertically integrated, market-dominating carrier such as Comcast could now employ its usage caps (which wouldn’t necessarily apply to its own or affiliated services) to effectively squeeze out competitors providing information, entertainment or connections that Comcast didn’t want to support.
