@aral the better analogy would be a supermarket chain IMHO
The "shopping mall" are the centralized hosters, people tend to not self-host, let alone on own hardware (I'll excuse hosting in own DC); shopping malls can still have independents... but they all pay rent to a single overlord (Hoster/colocation); the roads are ISPs, which few do on their own... (as at that point it becomes a near full time job ;)