Short answer : Enshittification.
Long and brilliant explanation here : https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Most of the aspects have already been covered but I would want to add one:
This was always the plan, it just wasn't as highly prioritised as growth.
I work as a developer at a big tech company. We (the company) had our roadmap and it was mostly about getting more users. The more users you have the day the economy turns - the better off you are (... If you manage to turn an profit).
So when the economy went to shit and we (and other tech companies) no longer can loan money for free to cover our running expenses - the priorities shift. Working towards attracting more users is only going to increase your costs at the point and you don't want to run out of money. So all roadmaps changed and cost saving efforts became the highest prio all of the sudden.
This was always the plan, to put a world in your hand...
And then squeeeeze it until the last drop of blood dripps out of it.
Money is tighter since the inflation affects VC and stupid money flowing in. Stock prices are not going up, people have no money to play with (see the death of NFTs at the same time, the definition of a stupid investment).
While these changes will eventually happen, as all of these companies are meant to make a profit from the start. The reason they're all happening now is because of the coming recession, or at least the believe that it will come.
I think it's a consequence of higher interest rates drying up VC money, meaning that tech companies now have to actually be profitable, rather than just grow.
If the plan was grow now, profit later, then later has come
Nailed it, investors are demanding profit increases, it's not just interest rates (though they're the main reason) but also the corporate tax cuts in 2018 basically dumped a ton of profit onto corporations because they repatriated all their offshore cash they'd been hoarding.
That bump lasted 2 years, but the expectation of higher revenue is still there, it doesn't matter if you got lucky at slots last month, if you make your normal salary this month investors will be absolutely pissed.
This sounds too stupid to be real but I was working for one of the largest corporations in the world during this period and we were congratulated on 20% growth even though we did nothing. Of course we didn’t get an extra bonus or anything but they acted like we had an incredible year when we really just had an average year with a massive tax cut.
Then the next year, our goal was to grow at 20% again and when we missed it by 17%, no one got a bonus or raise.
This timeline is the stupid one.
Capitalism: "Numbers go brrrrr"
Most companies really are that retarded because everyone wants to look good and take credit for every great thing happening. People like that should not be in charge of anything.
This is what irritates me. You still made money just not as much as you wanted or hoped so your company punishes you. You can't have infinite growth
You can't have infinite growth
Every publicly-traded company: "Hold my beer"
This is also a great example of why higher interest rates aren't automatically a terrible thing. In general, it's probably a good sign for the economy that companies are expected to be profitable. Means resources are being used well. The limitless VC money kinda meant any dumb idea regardless of merit got funding.
I wish we lived in a society where not everything needed to be profitable. People deserve treats and sucks to have things that made our lives better go awake because shareholders demand money
Just wait till you have to pay per email. You're not still using Gmail are you?
Why switch now if I could switch later (if they would really monetize it with fees, which I doubt)? It would be a pain in any case.
It's free because you're the product. All that content is scanned
Paranoid much?
Google Mail does not scan the content of your emails for the purpose of showing you ads. However, Google Mail does use some information about your emails, such as your email address and the sender and recipient addresses, to improve its spam and phishing filters.
You can control how much information Google Mail collects about your emails by adjusting your privacy settings. For example, you can choose to have Gmail not scan your email attachments for viruses.
Just read their general terms.
Companies expect infinite profit growth
I always found this particularly odd. Is it greed, or some sort of business culture that is ingrained?
It's just capitalism. It's built on infinite growth.