Most "innovation" coming out of the US is about destroying the planet and making a quick buck off the fad of the moment; though I live in neither, my sympathy for European model continues to grow.
It is both fruit factory fanboyism as well as anti-EU sentiment and it has nothing to do with 'capitalists' not liking 'consumers' having choices. Without capitalism the problem would not exist, so much is true. It would not exist because there wouldn't be anything to choose from: no browser market, no mobile devices, no choice. This tired anti-capitalism rhetoric needs to be shelved with the other books from the 60's and 70's.
It most certainly does. What company (capital) willingly gives consumer the choice to stop paying for their product? The only time that actually happens is when they are forced to, either via competition, or regulation. Any time they can lock consumers in to their solution, they do so.
I think it's more the US did the whole embrace-extend-extinguish to all their EU competition. There were EU-developed smartphones up until Google/Apple ate the world.
We use our Civilization Ability "Globalism" to tie all of those disparate components into trillion-dollar consumer devices. It gives us a massive advantage and lets us run up the scoreboard.
