A common protocol doesn't prevent progress or evolution. Look how far browsers have come over the past 20 years, all while working off common HTML, CSS, and JS specs. Would the world be a better place if there were the Apple internet, and the Google internet, instead of a common one?

If there's a vested interest in making something better, it gets better. Walled gardens for basic messaging communication has 0 societal benefit, and there's effectively no downside to adopting a common protocol. Societies are now demanding that obvious problems with easy solutions be solved, and thus the various governments will.

Perhaps some think that the internet would've been better as a series of distributed walled gardens under various single private entities... I can't contend with people who hold that belief. Having easy and common ways to interact with the rest of humanity that anybody can participate in freely seems a far better outcome.

Unfortunately far too many Apple zombies out there that will contort obvious logic to defend them at every opportunity. The distortion field is really something to behold