The Commercial Monopoly in Enclosure 3.0

Having read the concerns of the cloud service in the Cloud: Boundless Digital Potential or Enclosure 3.0? , I find myself fall into the same negative angle of viewing the flourishing cloud service, especially in the commercial monopoly respect. As I plan to discuss in my final research paper, the development of new type of technology might be an exciting progression for large companies, but for most small struggling companies whose budgets are relatively limited, it is no doubt another drawback comparing to the upgraded companies.

Many large companies distribute their apps on IOS and Android platforms. For example, Wechat, the largest standalone-messaging app in China, initial released in January 2011 and speedily occupied a large market share. One of the most important reason is it’s produced by Tencent, the forth-largest Internet company in the world, which promises it sufficient budget of the development of app, the purchase of server and the maintenance fee. However, it is unaffordable for small companies. Even though they do have developed their apps, the expensive developing and advertising fee excludes them from being excellent and well known, which makes them impossible to compete with large Internet companies like Tencent.

From Internet era to Cloud era, the surviving possibilities diminish for small companies also because of the different characteristics of Internet and Cloud. Comparing to Internet era, Cloud era stresses more on convenient information stream rather than the share of information. People are more likely to upload and download things from a certain server instead of browsing around the Cloud, which decreases their chances of encountering something new. It is not hard to imagine that very soon, several large companies would divide the whole Cloud up and provide us information only profitable to them.