How to pick a software product

This post is a personal study (ramblings) in what I believe is the ideal way to pick a software. Ideal means I aspire to do that way. Not there yet. The title reminds of an essay from a school book, "how to pick an orange". English not being my native I was wondering how come it takes 2 pages to explain how to pick an orange when a baby can do that instinctively, until I read it.

Software has consumed the world because world consumes software all the time. Technology comes as an option and becomes essential. Which is why humans are not happier, freer despite advancements.

We make many software choices. Netflix vs Prime vs Apple TV or all of them. Android vs iOS. Gmail vs Outlook. Teams vs Slack. Wordpress vs Blogger.

Ideally, I want my software and ecosystem to be open and not closed. Open means I am not locked-in. I am free to switch to other software. It can interoperate with other pieces of software.

I want the owners of that software to be profitable so they continue to live. Free software makes me skeptical and on toes on when and how badly it will end. Even paid products die all of a sudden like Typepad shutting down. Free or subsidized software is more dangerous. I'll look at who is subsidizing it and how long can they sustain.

Gmail and google search is subsidized by Google's ad business. With ads in search Google has a conflict on interest and by nature can't serve the best results. You have to understand that and then use or not use the product.

Not everyone can pay for all online products. Sometimes there are no good paid alternatives like in Google search.

2010-20 was insane time of VC funded startups. When banks did not give enough free money on money i.e. interest a good amount of money was put into organized gambling that is venture capital. Founders are the gamblers. VC kept the house advantage.

With that came a long list of subsidized products that were funded by large sums of money to capture a large market and eventually make money.

Free product is free until it is not. Sometimes it's too late. Google photos for example. A bit more technical but serverless framework is another example. VC's snare is to trap as much and as tightly a population that when they start asking for money it almost feels like extortion. Extortion because you can't exit easily. Like an addict.

If someone does you a favor you are essentially indebted. They kind of own you. It works the same way in software. Take no favors or at least know the cost.

If I use Gmail for free it works because large number of businesses pay Google for it's services. Remember medium was free and then they introduced a lazy monetization strategy to eventually profit. Their growth tanked, I doubt medium will survive and all the bloggers will be looking for new home on a short notice.

People are rallying to substack because that's the latest trend. Substack is also free and not profitable. They said they won't show Ads and now they raised $100 million and they changed their mind. Substack may become profitable but at what cost. Substack makes money when consumers pay the writers for their content and Substack takes a cut. It's not hard to imagine Substack will do everything to shove paid and paid-for content to their audience. The free blogs exist to funnel people into the very few who are heavily paid. They have launched a social feed to feed people their algorithm. Started as a blogging/writers platform and ended up being social media.

In creative work power law works. Top 1% of the creator take all the attention. With internet and global scale products its even worse because where you could be a reasonable and sane voice in your circle/town/culture you may not stand a chance at global stage like facebook, twitter, or substack.

Algorithms stifle diversity and culture. They create an all encompassing homogeneity so that everything looks the same. I am sure the trend will be reversed for human survival is not possible without diversity. Our collective conscious is smart enough to not not recognize that.

I, with this post, am trying to steer the collective conscious to taking decisions that lead to a free and open world. World that has diversity instead of homogeneity. Local communities and culture over global sameness. Rivalry over conglomerates.

Typepad was a solid and profitable business. When a conglomerate bought it, it was killed eventually. You could've seen that coming. The same company owned multiple hosting companies that benefit from Wordpress which is Typepad competition. They essentially bought out the competition. The same company owns both Bluehost and Hostgator. While consumers are debating on Reddit which one of the two to go with.

Humans are used to buying from sellers they trust. With modern corporate structures, it's hard to find out the real seller. Know your seller. Bluehost is not the seller. Seller is Newfold digital. You were not running a blog on Typepad. You were running a business with Newfold digital.

Big companies are hard to trust because they don't have a face. A public company is owner by a millions of shareholders or atleast run by several board members. Who do you trust? CEOs are temporary.

Backup your data. If a business stops making sense, they will kill it. Opt for services where you can own your data and backup often. Only don't backup that you can afford to lose. This goes for your email account, online photos and storage, passwords, blogs, or even money in the bank. Keep redundancy where you can.

Buy from humans. Buy local if you can. It's only lindy.