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Comment by aimkey | Hacker News Reader

Lock in

There's no lock in here. People are free to switch to one of the many competing services. It's not a monopoly under any reasonable definition of the term. Of course switching is going to have inertia, but that's not lock in. Lock in is when you are contractually obligated not to change, or if the monopoly is shutting down all competing services (perhaps by acquisition) so that there are no alternatives. For a good example of this type of lock in, just look at Ticketmaster.

No refunds. So it's literally lock-in for a year.

https://support.google.com/google-workspace-individual/answe... (for individual) https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2736362?hl=en (for Drive) - I don't see it for Admin but it's probably the same.

Here's one for Google Workspace Admin: "The Annual Plan charges you for the exact number of licenses you signed up for through a yearly commitment." The "commitment" makes it sound non-refundable. https://support.google.com/a/answer/1230658?hl=en

If you contract for services for a year, and pay for that year up front at a discounted rate, why would you expect a refund if you unilaterally terminate the contract partway through? Just wait until the contract is up to switch services. You already paid for those months! If you're not sure you want to use the service for a full year then opt for the month-to-month contract.

No, you seem to be confusing "vendor lock-in" with "monopoly". The above isn't what is meant by "vendor lock-in". Here's a good explanation by Cloudflare:

> Vendor lock-in refers to a situation where the cost of switching to a different vendor is so high that the customer is essentially stuck with the original vendor. Because of financial pressures, an insufficient workforce, or the need to avoid interruptions to business operations, the customer is "locked in" to what may be an inferior product or service.

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cloud/what-is-vendor-loc...

A practical example of vendor lock-in is an elderly aunt with mine who has an email address from her ISP. She isn't "contractually obligated" to continue using that email, nor the ISP. The ISP certainly doesn't have a monopoly on email. But the effort to switch from an email that she's been using for 15 years is very high for someone with weak tech skills. I'm probably in a similar situation with Gmail, as it's the primary contact by which most people know me. I can't take my Gmail address and port it; I have to create a new email and get people to update their address books.

Well, whatever you want to call it, it's not monopoly, it's not illegal, and it's not even necessarily intended; it's just the nature of things that switching incurs costs. By this definition I too am "locked in" to my apartment, because even though my signed lease only runs through next year, if I want to leave I have to incur all the costs and hassles of moving.

But I don't really feel "locked in" to the apartment. Maybe it needs a better, more accurate phrase. "Switching friction"? That more accurately describes the situation than "lock in".

> There's no lock in here. People are free to switch to one of the many competing services.

There is significant lock-in with email because:

1 - Email migration sucks and if you're a big org, this process can/will be complicated, expensive and carry potential down time for end-users.

2 - The bigger you are, the less willing you are to go through with #1 without a really, really ridiculously good reason

Migration is so painful some companies are still emailing from unpatched Exchange 2007 servers under the IT guy's desk.

1 - That isn’t lock in. That’s like saying you’re locked in to your month to month rental apartment because you have to move so much furniture, and that has a hassle and cost associated with it.

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