Do Apple and Google stop you from opening a web browser and navigating to any web site?
Because that was the trillion-dollar vision for mobile operator owned WAP portals around 1999. They would completely control access to online services on mobile devices. That was how they planned to get a cut on everything you view on a phone.
> Do Apple and Google stop you from opening a web browser and navigating to any web site?
Apple kind of does, yes. They do let me use exactly one web browser.
On my old Symbian phone, I had the choice of the built-in WebKit browser, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, all with different rendering engines and their various advantages and downsides.
Now it's all WebKit frontends.
> That was how they planned to get a cut on everything you view on a phone.
Apple does get a cut of every web search I do, and I can't even use the search engine of my choice.
Not that I think the mobile phone operators and manufacturers of the early 2000s would be better custodians of user freedom on their devices, but I don't think it's correct to paint this as an unequivocal change for the better.
There was more design by committee back then (and the committees were as bureaucratic as it gets, just open any 3GPP or OMA specification and you'll never complain about anything W3C again), but there was also more pluralism of device design and UX aesthetics, and more than two implementations of everything, both by US companies sometimes struggling to empathize with users living in other countries and speaking other languages.
Because that was the trillion-dollar vision for mobile operator owned WAP portals around 1999. They would completely control access to online services on mobile devices. That was how they planned to get a cut on everything you view on a phone.