I guess that's fair... ultimately money is everything, but I do think there are absolutely companies who highly value the control aspect as well. It can give them the ability to censor, act as a gatekeeper, and nickel and dime.

Saas seems a lot more predatory and risky than most products/services. You hand over money, you hand over control, you hand over your data and all of it leaves you varying degrees of vulnerable.

I guess I shouldn't expect a pragmatic view of saas to be popular around here (some of you are likely working on your own saas projects after all), but the reasons saas is attractive for companies to offer are the same reasons that make me hesitate to use them.

Money is the goal of the individual Cogs in the machine. Control is the goal of the machine itself, which uses money to incentivize (power) its Cogs. If you're a Big Tech company you essentially have endless free money to leverage compared to your Cogs. The machine itself doesn't care about money. That free money train is coming to an end though over the next decade. Or at least that's the reality I'm planning for. :)