The strategy is not to build a product but a marketplace, where others will build products and you will take a cut. App stores are the largest marketplaces. In

The strategy is not to build a product but a marketplace, where others will build products and you will take a cut. App stores are the largest marketplaces. Instead of taking a cut from levels produced for a game, articles published on a website, videos published on YouTube, or plugins developed for some enterprise software, they take a cut from all applications developed for a platform. But the principle is the same. The problem here is not taking the cut, per se, but rather the oligopoly. If we had dozens of app stores, with easy switching for users, the developers would move to less abusive ones. Maintaining the infrastructure costs some money, so taking maybe 5% would be appropriate. Or maybe taking 10% and providing excellent development tools in return. With websites that monetize articles, I don't mind that they take a cut, because I can easily move away from them if I decide that they take too much and it would be cheaper to host everything myself, and maybe pay someone to move the articles from the old place to the new one. Moving articles is simple, it's just text and pictures, and maybe some formatting gets lost in the process. With Apple and Android, there are no other places to move, and the applications would need a rewrite. Which is why they have greater leverage. The problem is not taking a cut (what the author refers to as parasitism). Infrastructure costs something; how else do you imagine it would be paid for? The problem is the lack of choice.