I also think regulation is important. Like energy markets, some software, particularly communication systems, favor big players due to network effects. So regu

I also think regulation is important. Like energy markets, some software, particularly communication systems, favor big players due to network effects. So regulators should prevent anticompetitive behaviors such as what happened with Google Talk. When Google Talk was a new product, it was a fantastic XMPP implementation. They even contributed the Jingle extension to implement VoIP. Once they became a dominant force, XMPP federation was removed effectively making it impossible to communicate with Gmail accounts from other providers. Later on, with the transition to Google Hangouts, XMPP was replaced by a proprietary protocol making it impossible to use even a different client other than Google's.