A central idea of this article is that >Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook are truly the new telecoms—each within the last few years has built or bought a

A central idea of this article is that >Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook are truly the new telecoms—each within the last few years has built or bought a communication platform of their own. Some aspects of this analogy are true, but it's weak overall. Telecom is an extremely capital intensive business. Online messaging is not.* As a result, if telecom companies screw you over, it's hard for a startup to replace them. With online messaging, if a service screws you over, it's relatively easy to switch to a new standard/provider. That feedback mechanism should hopefully keep the messaging platforms better than the telecom platforms. *and yes, online messaging runs on lots capital, but the capital - fiber lines and whatnot - is already pretty open