walled garden
noun phrase

- a service provider on the internet that controls users’ access to content from other sources

MacMillan Dictionary

See also: Daniel Memetic - “Escaping the Walled Gardens in the Clouds”

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ORIGIN

Garden : late 13c. from Old North French *gardin, Old French *jardin, from Vulgar Latin *hortus gardinus “enclosed garden,” via Frankish *gardo, from Proto-Germanic *gardan- Old Saxon *gardo, Old High German *garto, German *Garten

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GARDEN IDIOMS

- lead someone up (down) the garden path = give someone misleading clues or signals (Their developer led them up the garden path and inflated his invoice).

- common-or-garden (garden-variety) =  describes something of a very ordinary kind and with no special features (Being old-school, I still use a common-or-garden mobile phone).

- gardening leave = a period in which an employee does not work but continues to get paid, as before leaving or being terminated by a company (Jim’s on gardening leave right now, but I’m sure they’re going to fire him).

everything is rosy in the garden = everything is going well. Usually used in describing negative situations (The owners went on pretending that everything was rosy in the garden).

a skunk at a garden party = someone or something that is unwelcome or unpleasant (Running into my ex-husband at the conference was like encountering a skunk at a garden party)

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SYNONYMS

a walled garden, a closed platform, a closed ecosystem, a digital monopoly, vendor lock-in, proprietary lock-in, customer lock-in, golden cage

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Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“WALLED GARDENS make it inconvenient to switch to other providers.”

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Paul Smith