The history of the Internet and mobile is that in many categories the winner takes most of the market ... Lately, we’ve been wondering if there is an end to this pattern on the Internet and mobile. We think it is possible that an open data platform, in which users ultimately control their data and the networks they choose to participate in, could be the thing that undoes this pattern of winner takes most.

Blog post on AVC: Winner Take Most

Also some discussion in the comments about whether the pattern of startups rapidly growing into giants is over; maybe we're stuck with the giants we have and the innovations they deign to give us. Unless those open data platforms emerge ...

I don't know my history well enough, but I wonder how often mature, siloed markets have become standardized.

• Messaging: email started open & tiny; grew huge. Email sticking around but some of this usage going to service-specific messaging
• 1-1 chat: started proprietary, went open, now back to proprietary
• Group chat: started open with IRC, center of gravity now proprietary
• Publishing: AOL replaced by tiny/open http. Maybe going back to proprietary with Instant Articles
• Cloud storage: WebDAV is dead; iOS's storage provider API does standardize/commoditize this to an extent
• Identity: OAuth kinda ... services that want users to be able to log in via OAuth still need to decide which identity providers they want to support, and often they decide to go Facebook-only.