Not so long ago, I received a single Yellow Pages book from the local phone company each year. Every business in the area was pretty certain to be listed. The book was organized into generally useful categories with good cross referencing. (No, it wasn’t perfect.)

These days, I receive several different Yellow Pages directories. Each is generally of poorer quality than what I used to get. Each also has, inevitably, poorer coverage: Merchants are faced with the need to be listed in multiple directories, and each directory charges for that. Yes, I can look things up on-line – but frankly I have yet to find something as useful as the old Yellow Pages used to be. In the long run, the on-line alternative is all that will likely be left – the paper yellow pages business is fading. Competition has made it impossible for anyone to make a profit.

In this particular case, the “benevolent monopoly” approach was clearly better for *all* the participants. The expenses for merchants were lower; the phone company made money; and the public got a good product. Could the phone company have abused its position? Absolutely. Perhaps one can even find cases where they did. But over all, the old Yellow Pages existed as a valuable service exactly *because* it was a monopoly.

Apple has *always* looked for some “good” point along the closed/open spectrum. Sure, “good” means “maximizes Apple’s position” – but as long as Apple recognizes that that maximization depends on keeping most of its user base happy, that’s not a bad thing. Overwhelmingly, iPhone users don’t care one why or another whether the iPhone store is open or not. They care about what they can buy there, what it costs, how well it works. Right now, what Apple allows in seems to keep most their audience very satisfied. If you want more and still want an iPhone – jailbreaking is available. Apple’s been clever about making that hard – but not *too* hard. They don’t want to support it, but a jailbroken iPhone is still an Apple sale….

There’s little reason to believe that the iPhone browser would get any better if competing browsers appeared in the Apple store. The browsing experience is central to what Apple is selling, and they would concentrate great effort on it anyway. Competition here isn’t relevant.

On the other hand, it’s great for the market that Palm has something that actually has the potential to be a real competitor. It’s just unfortunate that Palm itself is so weak and so late to the game. None of the incumbent phone suppliers seem to have a clue about how to compete against Apple, and they are showing no signs of learning. As for Android – again, potential, but with other practical problems (no strong marketing/sales organization).