As the Google-led Chat carrier service shows, encryption is only viable for closed systems, so increased privacy regulations may further entrench walled gardens
It was eight years ago next month that Vic Gundotra, then-VP of Engineering at Google, delivered a blistering attack on Apple for not being open:1
Context & Ripple Effects
Eight years after Vic Gundotra attacked Apple for being closed, Google's own messaging record has inverted the argument: Hangouts was confirmed wiretappable by police, and [[a:916965|Gmail's end-to-end encryption project was handed to open-source developers rather than shipped]]. The carrier-led Chat service is the latest data point for the thesis that real encryption only survives inside a controlled stack.
That puts Google in an awkward spot. Sundar Pichai publicly backed Apple on encryption during the FBI fight (his 2016 tweet supporting Apple), yet Google's cross-platform messaging ambitions keep colliding with the fact that Apple's closed iMessage encrypts by default while open standards do not — a gap Hiroshi Lockheimer would later call out directly.
First-order effects
- Google's Chat service gives carriers a modern default messenger, but because it runs over an open standard rather than a closed system, it cannot match iMessage's default end-to-end encryption — leaving Android users on carrier networks with weaker privacy than iPhone users.
Second-order effects
- Apple gains a regulatory tailwind it never had to argue for: every privacy mandate raises the compliance bar toward integrated hardware-software stacks, pressuring Google to either close its own garden or concede the privacy high ground.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, privacy regulation becomes a moat-building force: rules written to protect users structurally favor incumbents who control whole systems, entrenching the very walled gardens the open-internet era was supposed to dismantle.
The trend: Privacy regulation is shifting from a check on big platforms to a structural subsidy for them, rewarding vertically integrated closed systems over open ones.