"SaaSpocalypse" Is Merely a Regression to Normal

pawelbrodzinski.substack.com

8 points·flail··3 comments

>>As consumers, we grow more and more accustomed to paying for services. Just check how many subscriptions you had two decades ago, a decade ago, and now. I bet the trend is as clear as day.

This trend is accurate, but it does not mean it is what people want, it is what they are stuck with.

Corporations across an entire market locking-in customers with hard-to-cancel subscriptions does NOT mean subscriptions are what people want, it means only it is what they are stuck with. E.g., Adobe, which is so bad the FTC has started a probe [0].

"Revealed preference" theory based on purchasing habits is pure BS unless the customer has a truly equal range of choices in the market.

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...

The question is not whether we like or want subscriptions, but rather whether we're used to them. And the answer is yes.

Given the choice, we'd be using Spotifys and Netflixes for free, and have ad-free Google. I don't expect that choice to be given to us.

AI tools won't change anything on that account. At best, we'll switch one subscription for another one, except that the latter will add a bill for the tokens we use.

The mixed use of commas and decimal points in those stock charts is warping my brain.

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