We call this vertical integration. Basically looking at any process you can make a table of different parts of the process on the y axis and different competitors of those parts on the x axis.

The more width you get, the better. It means high competition, and that’s healthy for a market now if it looks like a needle vertically, you got a problem. This is when we move closer to Monopoly, where a process can only be down by one chain of services. No competition. This means, that one provider can do what he wants, as people are bound to this provider and have to make do. Cue price increases.

Vertical integration means making your services interoperable to a degree where other providers can’t keep up. If there’s no other providers, there’s no competition. Now you got a monopoly. That is what vertical integration is in it’s final form.