What is a walled garden?
A walled garden is a digital ecosystem where everything works perfectly between services of the same brand, and poorly with everything else. Apple and Google are the textbook examples. The comfort inside is real, and that is precisely what makes leaving costly. The topic continues in chapter 12 of my book, Vivre sans Google.
Information verified on July 13, 2026
The image is right there in the name: a pleasant, well-kept garden surrounded by a wall. Inside an ecosystem like Apple’s or Google’s, everything fits together. Your photos flow from phone to computer, your messages follow you, your devices recognize each other. Toward the outside, everything turns rough: poorly supported formats, tedious transfers, degraded features.
This is not a design flaw, it is the model. The comfort inside is real, nobody disputes it. But that comfort is precisely what locks you in: the more your digital life settles into the garden, the more effort it takes to leave. Who wants to rebuild everything elsewhere when everything works here? Network effects add their own layer: your friends and family are inside too.
A walled garden differs from vendor lock-in. The latter builds technical barriers, the former holds you through comfort first. The two often combine, and that is when the dependency becomes hard to undo. On mobile, the choice comes down to two gardens anyway: Apple’s and Google’s. Which one is tending yours?
Where it plays out: chapter 12 of the book tackles the most closed of the two, your phone, the Mobile operating systems category presents the alternatives, and the guide to de-Googling Android shows where to start.
This topic is chapter 12 of my book
It answers these questions, among others:
- clean up your Android, switch systems or simplify: which path is yours?
- which phone for the kids, without Google services or Family Link?
- and which phone do I actually use, after all this?
Forthcoming 22/10/2026 from Éditions Eyrolles
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Tech jargon, translated
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