Yeah, both Google and Apple have contributed to the commoditisation of consumer software. But I don't think it was a strategy designed to screw over independent

Yeah, both Google and Apple have contributed to the commoditisation of consumer software. But I don't think it was a strategy designed to screw over independent developers though. It was designed to stop Microsoft. Microsoft's 90s dominance was achieved by commoditising PC hardware, owning the OS market and the most profitable parts of the software market, and locking in the rest of the software market to their OS. Apple and Google looked at this and decided that, rather than try to beat MS at their own game, they were going to change the rules to favour their own strengths. In Apple's case, that's hardware. In Google's case, that's web services and advertising. Apple's strategy was to decommoditise hardware by making their products premium, desirable objects. Meanwhile, they gave their OS and its upgrades away for free, so decreasing the perceived value of Windows. Then they built a software market on top of their OS, one even more locked-down than in the old Windows model. Google's strategy was initially to make the OS irrelevant by building the web into an alternative application platform. Then, when mobile arrived, they gave away Android for free in order to both encourage commoditisation of mobile hardware (discouraging Apple/iPhone dominance) and lower the perceived value of OS (harming MS/Windows).