Make the Metaverse a Sandbox

Interoperability can make or break technology, and much is still broken. Many Google apps don’t work well on an iPhone. Why? Apple wants you to use its apps, interoperability be damned. The iPad only recently added support for a mouse, but it’s not good enough for iPads to replace Mac computers and laptops. Why? To protect Apple’s $35 billion Mac business. Users suffer. Technology has a long history of ignoring interoperability. America Online ran its business like a walled garden. More hubris that didn’t end well. It even had two messaging services, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ (I seek you), that couldn’t send messages to each other until 2003.

In 1990 a judge ruled that competitors infringed

Lotus

Development’s copyright on its 1-2-3 spreadsheet’s command structure and keystrokes. But it turns out that file formats can’t be copyrighted or patented, allowing

Microsoft

Excel to read and write Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets. This interoperability was a boon to users, though in the end not so good for Lotus, as the company didn’t innovate enough beyond spreadsheets. To protect its Windows operating system, Microsoft was slow to embrace internet protocols like TCP/IP and mobile standards such as Bluetooth and lost its edge in both.

Standards matter. Think of road widths, gasoline mixtures and lights that don’t blind opposing drivers. The 120/220 volt electricity divide was fixed via sensors that allow travelers to use their computer and phone chargers universally, although with different plugs. AA batteries were introduced in 1907, standardized in 1947, AAA in 1911 and 1969. Cellphone standards were another benefit to users and keep evolving—6G isn’t coming until 2030 or so.

Which brings me to the Metaverse, an awful moniker for the nascent three-dimensional online world where we will eventually work, learn and play. I’d prefer names like the Hive or the Vortex (franchising opportunities available). Whatever we call it, there are no real standards for avatars, clothing, motion, weapons, speech or architecture.

To figure this out,

Facebook

aka Meta announced the purchase of Within, maker of virtual-reality fitness app Supernatural. Almost immediately, the Federal Trade Commission fought the purchase. Yes, there should be some caution about one company monopolizing the Metaverse the way Apple monopolizes the iPhone ecosystem and discriminates within iMessage. But the market is still tiny. The Journal reports Meta’s Horizon Worlds has a meager 200,000 monthly active users so far.

Some form of the Metaverse will happen, but we’re still in the Palm Pilot stage of development—clunky, expensive equipment and low-resolution offerings that don’t do much. That will change. Reinventing education alone will make it worth it. Who cares if Meta buys a fitness app? In Silicon Valley, many companies are bought not for their products but for their people. This is known as acquisition hiring, or “acquihires.” Heck, some venture capitalists build companies just to be bought.

My free-market instincts make me allergic to government intervention. Instead, as in financial markets, government’s role is to set up rules for the sandbox and then let everyone play in it. Let the best sand castle win. Make sure everyone can get in and out of the sandbox on equal terms. We almost have to let Meta or anyone buy companies early in the development of the Metaverse to tinker with applications and business models and prove to others what works, enticing them to join in.

If I were the FTC, I’d let Meta, Microsoft or Google make as many acquisitions as they want for the next decade, but only in exchange for open standards and interfaces so that competing firms can build their own version of this space to connect and be interoperable with what already exists. Governments are involved with standards—the National Institute of Standards and Technology is part of the U.S. Commerce Department. But instead of defining details of these new worlds, the focus should be on sensible interfaces and application programming interfaces so everyone can access the sandbox.

When there are standards for basic technology formats and protocols, battles move higher up the value chain, to more important things, such as delivering real productive services rather than worrying if things made by Google will work with things made by Meta. This would benefit us all rather than letting Tim Cook protect long-in-the-tooth products such as the iPhone. Standardizing the past is what will force innovators to buzz the Hive or swirl the Vortex and invent the future.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.