> people would never pay for software.

I see this and not see this.

See this = friend wants to check out app but it costs $1-$3. I'm like, that's less than a coffee or a candy bar that you consume disposably. Why not just try it and if it's sucks throw it away, the same way you might with a new food item? That argument doesn't work on them for some reason.

not see = Steam

Also, do people not pay for it because there are still so many free competing services?

If everything goes the way of ads and (for lack of a better term) enshittification, could consumer attitudes change?

There is a market for paid software services with a promise of not enshittifying. Kagi and Fastmail are two examples.

Now, this market probably isn’t going to put you in the Fortune 500, but is enough to run a profitable business.

The problem is that there is also tons of services that promised not to enshittify but then changed their minds when they thought that fucking over their users would be more profitable. That includes even Google, look up their early views on ads. Because of this those promises are often (IMO rightfully) ignored as hot air. The only way to ensure that your software doesn't get enshittified is to legally guarantee that you are not dependent on a single vendor for future development - the most effective way to do that is insist on open source software.

Yeah I love open source. Daily Linux desktop user and open source code contributor here.

Open source doesn’t solve the problem “I need to be able to search the entire internet for a document.” Even “I want to safely receive email” is a challenge to do with open source software. At some point I need to use software as a service, and at that point I’d prefer to give money to the service directly than having the service target advertising at me.

That's not the only way. Wikipedia has avoided it through a non-profit, donation and volunteer based structure.

>Why not just try it and if it's sucks throw it away, the same way you might with a new food item? That argument doesn't work on them for some reason.

Even mediocre food is still functional, and usually still enjoyable.

Quite a lot of paid software does not meet that bar. It's far more likely to both cost you money and waste a few hours (much longer than that food demanded, unless you got food poisoning).

I generally agree it's far out of balance, but I do think it's broadly understandable.

> Even mediocre food is still functional, and usually still enjoyable.

That's not even remotely close to being true. Plenty of people would order a $25 dish at a place and not like it. Not finishing the dish, or throwing a way a half eaten candy bar or bad-tasting-$6-cup of coffee is very normal. Plenty of (if most) food is meh or not enjoyable. It just serves a purpose and fills you and you move on.

I can't speak for others, but it is absolutely true for me. If I spend $1-3 on some item of food and it is so bad I can't or don't want to even eat it- it is pretty bad... and I am incredibly bummed out over it.

If you're routinely buying and throwing out $25 plates of food, then you're in a different income bracket than many people. And then, yes, avoiding a $3 app is more nonsensical than for most.

No one said you’re routinely doing it. It just happens for thing at orders of magnitude higher than what can be asked for software. One bad coffee, or meal or a %20 tip on a $40 order of pizza is far more than the 1.99 or 3.99 software can ask for, and it’s still too much. Tipping $5 or a $10 is not a big deal, but a $1.99 app is like “ooof, is there like a free version?”

It’s not even a blanket statement on software. gamers have shown they are willing to pay, though their money comes with strings attached. Mac users are more willing to pay than Windows users who are more willing to pay than Linux users.

Yeah, I'm not claiming nobody pays for software. Clearly many do. Just that I understand people's default aversion - I encounter far more software than food that I would label "shit", despite eating far more food in total.

And software often requires you to enter payment info into who know what system (plus your phone number (plus make an account (plus opt into receiving spam from them until the universe dies))), if you're not using google play / the iOS app store. In a restaurant you put your card into the thing and you're done.

Also this:

>It just serves a purpose and fills you and you move on.

Is something many pieces of software I've used cannot even dream of achieving. They solely wasted my time.

It's why I think it's a shame that demos are a dying breed.

In my experience, a free and ad-free app is often better, because it was written by someone who doesn't have profit as a motive (often just a hobby). There are tons of great paid apps too, but it's hard to know which paid app is actually good and which is a slipshod app designed to profit from the rare user who will buy an app without much thought.

Plenty of university students around me who will order a $8 boba tea and be disappointed that the boba is cooked poorly or the milk ratio isn't good, and then do it again a couple days later.

But the difference is that food elicits cravings - you buy it because you imagine how good it'll be if it's done right this time and your body pressures you to buy it. Apps don't do that.

this probably goes back to the Steam counterexample - Game apps do elicit that craving.

    > Plenty of university students around me who will order a $8 boba tea

Is this "University of Monaco" (I jest) or UCLA or USC or Harvard or what? What kind of normie uni student is buying 8 USD bubble teas? Ridiculous.

>What kind of normie uni student is buying 8 USD bubble teas? Ridiculous.

I can't speak to anywhere else, but these[0][1] are near Columbia University and $8 is pretty normal there, AFAICT. Presumably YMMV depending on where you are.

[0] https://order.gongchausa.com/

[1] https://www.trycaviar.com/store/tea-magic-new-york-841338/11...

Ok, so my joke stands. Columbia University is in Manhattan -- incredibly expensive by any measure.

Even here in Barcelona a bubble tea is about 6 euro. It's not something I'd get every day, but it's a nice thing on a hot day. A treat like an ice cream.

And the purchasing power in America is about 3-4 times as high. Also, you don't really get poor students there. If you're poor in America you just don't get to go to college.

    > And the purchasing power in America is about 3-4 times as high.

The median income in Barcelona ~34K EUR per year. The median income in New York City is ~42K USD per year.

    > If you're poor in America you just don't get to go to college.

What? Who told you that? This is untrue. There are lots of grants (free money) and loans available to low income students. Also, the university system in the US is much less rigid than Spain. In the US, many lower income people will first attend community college to get a two years associate's degree. Then, start a job, and attend night school at a university for another 3-4 years to get an undergraduate degree.

It’s also easier to pay for something that I feel I’m entirely getting as a treat for me. Sure, that snack is $5, but it’s all a “treat”. Software often doesn’t feel like a treat to own, outside of games that is, having to pay for apps you’d just use in every day life feels emotionally more like an annoying tax you have to pay to just continue existing, just like an electricity bill or something. I honestly think that’s the main psychological difference that people aren’t considering or even mentioning.

Thanks to Australian customer protection laws, Steam has some of the most lenient refund policies among digital software stores. You can usually get a full refund if your play time is less than a few hours. Plus there are frequent sales. Don’t underestimate the psychological impact of making people feel “I have to buy this now or the deal will be gone.”

I genuinely do not know how to get a refund from the google play store or the apple equivalent.

(The downside of the Steam policy is it makes Steam unviable for games that can be played in full very quickly. Develops can also game the system by dragging out early game so the player is over the refundable time by the time they reach the rough parts. But this is for another discussion.)

There's no problem getting a refund for apps in my experience, I've done it a handful of times when I've changed my mind and it was easy and fully automated.

Anecdotally, as a counterpoint, I asked for refunds on the iOS App Store maybe twice in a row and since then every purchase was met with a dialog where I had to confirm I waved my right to a refund.

This was over a decade ago, so may be very outdated. I don’t even think in-app purchases were yet a thing. I wasn’t trying to abuse the apps (I pay for software) and was in fact trying to use the refund policy to allow me to buy more apps because I could test without the fear of paying for duds. Their policy had the opposite effect and I basically stopped buying on the App Store.

> Thanks to Australian customer protection laws

Source? I always thought this was a general Steam policy, as it's available pretty much anywhere.

> Thanks to Australian customer protection laws, Steam has some of the most lenient refund policies among digital software stores. You can usually get a full refund if your play time is less than a few hours.

I think it’s actually worldwide?

Sony does not follow this, how are they getting away with it?

My point is, this is just something Steam does, not something they are required to do (at least not everywhere).

Just for clarification: they are required to refund customers in some jurisdictions (apparently Australia was the reason, indeed), so they might have decided to do this for everybody

a) out of the kindness of their heart (i.e. good public image), or

b) just not to deal with complexity of introducing different refund schemas per region.

Probably a mixture of both.

Also

c) to preempt additional regulation in more jurisdictions

Steams refund policies are still fairly weak IMO. For many games, two hours doesn't really tell you much about the quality of the game and Steam also knows that many users will not get around to even trying games they pick up within the two weeks that they grant refunds for.

Imagine you went to a physical store and bought something that turned out to be broken after a couple hours of use and the Store just said too bad. Absolutely unacceptable there but Steam reserves the right to and does often refuse refunds that are not within their stated limits.

You also don't have as much leverage with Steam as you do with some random store. If a merchant fucks you over you are supposed to be able to reverse the transaction but with Steam trying that with even one game will get you banned from the store completely - and with Steam being a not-quite monopoly that means many games will literally be unavailable to you.

AFAIK you also still cant refund Steam wallet "cash" into real money so if you bought a Steam wallet card in order to buy a Game and then want to refund that game you can effectively only exchange it for other Steam products which is not a real refund.

IMO Steam gets a lot of undue credit just for not being quite as terrible as the competition.

Yes, but they did it because Australia forced them to.

I doubt that, EU consumer rights already stated that "the consumer shall have a period of 14 days to withdraw from a distance or off-premises contract". Steam purchases count as "digital content" in that case.

[0]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2011/83/oj#art_9.tit_1

In practice I've sometimes encountered that in the form of "either waive your right of withdrawal or else wait 14 days to download your content/activate your licence/etc.", though.

I don’t think that would fly in any EU court?

It would and does. There is little (EU-wide) legal protection for consumers of digital content.

This is not true for digital purchases when you waive your rights to withdraw which you have to accept for digital storefronts. See under point 19).

You can doubt whatever you want but the fact is Steam did NOT offer refunds until they were sued in Australia and lost.

As for EU consumer rights, look at Article 16 (m) in the link you posted:

> Exceptions from the right of withdrawal

> Member States shall not provide for the right of withdrawal set out in Articles 9 to 15 in respect of distance and off-premises contracts as regards the following:

> [...]

> (m) the supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium if the performance has begun with the consumer’s prior express consent and his acknowledgment that he thereby loses his right of withdrawal.

Got a source for that?

They got sued (and lost) back in 2014 in Australia for not having a refund policy: https://www.techradar.com/news/heres-valves-official-stateme...

The ACCC did win a $3M AUD judgement against them for their refund policies:

* https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million... (not currently loading for me)

* https://archive.is/9mE7i#selection-4964.0-4978.0 (archive of the above)

> The Court held that the terms and conditions in the Steam subscriber agreements, and Steam’s refund policies, included false or misleading representations about consumers’ rights to obtain a refund for games if they were not of acceptable quality.

> In determining the appropriate penalty to impose on Valve, Justice Edelman noted that “even if a very small percentage of Valve’s consumers had read the misrepresentations then this might have involved hundreds, possibly thousands, of consumers being affected”.

> Justice Edelman also took into account “Valve’s culture of compliance [which] was, and is, very poor”. Valve’s evidence was ‘disturbing’ to the Court because Valve ‘formed a view …that it was not subject to Australian law…and with the view that even if advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with the Australian law the advice might have been ignored”. He also noted that Valve had ‘contested liability on almost every imaginable point’.

Valve's notice to consumers is archived here, and no longer on their live website: https://web.archive.org/web/20180427063845/https://store.ste...

I can find news articles saying that the court action began in late Aug/early Sep 2014.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/steamowner-v...

Here's an old reddit comment discussing how Valve failed to implement AUD and KRW pricing on schedule, and speculates that at least in Australia's case, it's because of local compliance reasons.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/38dlvd/the_real_reas...

But I can't find anything that definitively ties the rollout of refund policies to an attempt to get the ACCC off their back. The comments on the above reddit post show that GOG and Origin had active refund policies at this time.

I got one from the play store once - I called them. The conversation was a bit surreal ( they kept telling me it wasn’t their fault , before eventually suggesting a refund )

> You can usually get a full refund if your play time is less than a few hours.

The explicit rule is you can get a refund on any game for any reason if both of these are true:

* You have played for less than two hours.

* You bought it in the past two weeks.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

I think it is because humans spent thousands, tens of thousands of years not doing much other than searching for food and trading one physical object for another physical object.

The idea of trading something valuable for an abstract piece of software or paper is still not really natural to us, and is a learned behavior.

I buy almost everything with a piece of plastic that represents a company who's agreed to lend me money that represents absolutely nothing except the common agreement that it's valuable.

Yes and credit cards are a learned behavior, not an instinctual thing - and I think not buying an app for $1 is largely based on instinct.

People instinctively or factually know that there are other apps that do basically the same thing for free.

It's the case for messaging apps and for almost any other kind of app. It's hard to beat the price point of a free app, even if it might include tracking, advertising, spying inside their package.

If WhatsApp would start asking for money hundreds of millions of people would switch to something else in a few days, even to a free app created overnight to capitalize on the opportunity.

On the other hand paying for service is the oldest profession going

Yep and the success of SAAS compared to low cost, buy it once software (like apps) is a testament to that.

Maybe one of the reasons is that buying software in general case is more complicated. Kebab around the corner does not ask you for credit card details, delivery address, probably will not want to track what you will be doing while digesting the kebab etc… In contrast buying a CD in 90’s was more like buying a food, but the price usually was too high. That grown into huge pirate software markets, like in eastern Europe. To extents like the other commenter said - “nobody ever will pay for software”.

I think it depends on the demographic.

I still see a lot of people who are afraid of purchasing on the internet and give out their card number. My mother in law ask her daughters to call her a uber when she needs one because she is afraid of installing the app and giving her credit card number[1]. Yet she has all the social medias installed on her smartphone.

[1] The irony is she apparently don't care the her own daughters would have to take that risk for her.

> [1] The irony is she apparently don't care the her own daughters would have to take that risk for her.

That's not a fair assessment. Maybe she simply thinks heir daughter will be better at not getting scammed and she could very well be right about that.

IMO the problem of many platforms is that they don't let you "own" the software (whatever that means).

Steam experience is closer to the feel of ownership because: - Most games don't just randomly upgrade. They are stable. - Steam is cross platform enough that you can use the software on different devices as if you were copying it. - Your steam account isn't the center of your digital life, it's access isn't subject to many associated risks.

I don’t buy that justification, most people have never and will never spare a thought for “software ownership”. I’d bet the truth is closer to “people don’t see games as software, but as entertainment. Paying for them is no different to paying to go to the movies, buy a song on iTunes, use Spotify, or Netflix”.

Apps (“software”) and games are fundamentally different in the public’s perception. Look at the App Store, it has two different tabs for games and Apple is even making a separate app for them.

People aren't willing to pay for mobile games any more than for other apps.

It’s curious that you had to specify mobile games. That seems to indicate you understand those are their own class of product (often more slot machine with extra steps than software or game) than what the conversation is about (Steam, thus desktop games).

The App Store—which, by the way, I was thinking of the one on the Mac—was merely an example to represent how companies understand and separate games from other software. I could’ve also made the point of games being seen as entertainment rather than software by pointing out Netflix has movies, TV shows, and games, but not other apps.

The accumulated loss, if some people lost their access to Steam is huge though. For some people that's thousands of euros.

> people would never pay for software.

I mostly share your conclusion, but I think there is a specific twist: most people will pay for on the spot transactions.

We see it in spades for games: in-app purchases and season passes have a lower barrier of acceptance. I assume buying stones to unlock a character must be thought at the same level as buying coffee, as just a one-time purchase that doesn't require further calculations.

at least for some of it what's nice is that you are getting exactly what you paid for on the tin, and most importantly you are not getting locked into some god-awful subscription with a cancellation process akin to pulling teeth.

the urge to buy goes down if the subscription is cheap enough ($.99 songs versus $12 a spotify subsscription) but having been through my fair share of attempting contract cancellations this isn't surprising.

It'd be interesting to see open data about this.

My understanding is games with microtransactions optimise for "whales", people who spend inordinate amounts of money. While the majority of users don't pay anything, or at most very little.

My understanding is whales make the mobile gaming industry the juggernaut it is, but without whales it would still be a sizeable market.

My mental image of it is looking at Apple when the iPhone was 2 or 3 years old, and today's Apple: its current size dwarfs the Apple of back in the days, but it wasn't some small also-ran company, it's impact on the whole industry was still pretty big.

AppsFlyer's data on this was interesting, while not straightforward to interpret from our angle.

https://www.appsflyer.com/resources/reports/app-marketing-mo...

You need a funnel to find the whales. Free users < sometimes pay a bit < regularly $10/week < whale

A big part of that is having payment methods on file so the transaction is as frictionless as possible.

If somebody has never purchased an app, setting up payments in the app might be seen as “too much work, especially just for this one app”. But once you get the payments in there, each subsequent 0.99 payment is painless

The problem with paying a small fee for a service is not the fee itself. It is the friction for paying for the service and the hassle that comes after the payment.

Now the credit card company knows what service I am buying; I would get endless marketing emails from the service for buying additional things; my info as a person willing to pay for such a service would get sold to other companies; my credit card info would get leaked/stolen, ...

If the whole experience was literally as simple as handing someone a $1 bill, I promise I would pay for many many internet services.

I can guarantee none of your concerns apply to the people I was talking about, particularly the privacy ones. These people would pay for their meal at a restaurant using their debit/credit card without hesitation, and they still do, and that’s arguably more likely to get your card details stolen, and the issuer knowing about your life. Those worries you’re citing never crossed their minds. They just didn’t want to pay a tiny amount of money for an “abstract” thing.

I don't disagree. I am mostly talking about my hesitations for not willing to pay small amounts of fees for bunch of internet services. I am afraid that the "cost" of paying for these services would end up being a lot more than the actual amount of money.

Incidentally, this is also the reason, as much as I would like to, for not donating to public/non-profit organizations. Anybody who has donated to a political party or an organization like ACLU would know what I am talking about...

I was just thinking about this the other day -- hotels so badly want me to book directly with them instead of using, say Booking.com.

But then to book directly and get the "guaranteed cheapest!" price, I have to sort through even more options than on an aggregator, I have to create an account, and now I'm getting spammed from ANOTHER entity I never plan to do business with again. At least with the aggregators I have one company whose privacy settings I've already dealt with.

I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start. Also booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options. Also if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com

> I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start.

What's your secret? Even the hotel in privacy-conscious Austria I stayed with once four years ago spams me.

> booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options

If their booking system works. Usually faster and more reliable to send a message on booking.com.

> if you have AAA or some other memberships, those codes can easily beat discount sites like Booking.com

Maybe if your time is worthless.

Not much of a secret, but clicking the unsubscribe links in emails helps. Anything new I sign up to I'm pretty religious about it. Some new email I didn't ask for -> instant unsubscribe. Works way better than one might expect.

Very noticeable when using custom domain and emails where I might sign up to the same service several times.

> Not much of a secret, but clicking the unsubscribe links in emails helps. Anything new I sign up to I'm pretty religious about it. Some new email I didn't ask for -> instant unsubscribe. Works way better than one might expect.

I usually do that and it works for a lot of things, but small hotels are one of the things that seems to slip through. And even when it works, I still resent having to do it at all, and would rather book via a big aggregator where I've already done the unsubscribe years ago.

Yep, fair enough. You are right, funnily enough it's small businesses who are the worst with this. The big ones spam a lot if you let them, but they do tend to respect the unsubscribe.

In these cases they get a dedicated email rule and anything they send goes straight to the bin.

A lot of hotels allows you to book room without creating an account and I don't remember receiving spam from those I visited. It would only make sense for chains which have a foot in every major city.

> It is the friction for paying for the service and the hassle that comes after the payment.

I don't know. Paying for streaming services seems very natural nowadays.

I really don't buy that the reason is the "tracking".

It's the friction of paying for something at all. There is no free sandwich, so people don't generally expect it, on the other hand there's plenty of free software.

On the other hand, I did pay the $1 for Whatsapp back in the day and I was promised it'd be ad free. Want that $1 back, I actually even deleted my account and uninstalled Whatsapp!

I feel a bit for Brian Acton - iirc he refused to sell because the 500M users paying $500M dollars was more than enough to fund his tiny team (of 30?), but when the offer went up to 19B$ it's just kind of hard to turn down - there's extreme opportunity cost there. Most people would sell before that, 19B$ of principle is quite a lot.

I think it's just if you're empire building - and Zuck is insanely good at this, one of the best - then it'll never be optimal to charge vs. grow massively and then monetize the larger attention base.

Zuck is also in a trench warfare competition with other social media players, it's far from a monopoly. He's historically been more inclined to do things that were worse for growth, but better for users when they had more of a dominant position - but he can't do that anymore.

Somewhat relatedly Apple really missed an opportunity with iMessage. Had they timed it right they could have had a dominant cross platform chat. Instead they're going to be stuck with the modern equivalent of BBM while Zuck and Meta erase their only remaining stronghold in the US as iPhone users continue to move to WhatsApp.

Highly doubt that - I feel like most people I communicate with on WhatsApp are for group chats vs individual messages might be imesssage or signal or many other platforms.

You know signal and iMessage support group chats, right?

Now Brian Acton has a huge pile of money to help fund Signal, so I don't think he has to feel too terrible about selling out.

> Somewhat relatedly Apple really missed an opportunity with iMessage. Had they timed it right they could have had a dominant cross platform chat.

Google also had the opportunity to do this. Around the same time iMessage launched, Google made Hangouts the default SMS app on Android with a similar capability to upgrade to Internet-based messaging when all parties to a conversation had it. Hangouts was cross-platform. Rumor has it carriers whined and Google caved.

I'm kind of glad Google doesn't have a dominant messaging service, but it's only true due to their own lack of commitment.

I used Hangouts including the dogfood versions internally at Google. Problem was it was too complicated because it was designed by Googlers for Googlers. So it supported desktop and mobile, work email and personal email and phone numbers, text and video, and so on. In short, every single complexity conceivable was crammed into the app.

Whereas Whatsapp was simple - only phone numbers to sign up, only text and images, only mobile phones. That simplicity meant my parents could onboard smoothly and operate it without having to navigate a maze of UX. I literally saw Whatsapp winning in real time vs Hangouts and other alternatives.

Thanks for the insider perspective.

I used Hangouts for a while and had a bunch of contacts on it when it was Android's default SMS app. Many of them were not particularly technical, including one of my parents whom I don't recall telling to use it. If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account. iPhone users had to work a little harder for it (install the app and remember the password to the Gmail account they probably already had).

I don't recall the UX on the mobile client having extra complexity over other messaging apps if I didn't go digging in the settings, but it's been a while.

I think the concept of a user having an existing Gmail account if they aren't in the Google ecosystem is a bit of hubris.

There are many people I run across who bypassed the whole Gmail and Google Workspace ecosystems and have rolled along merrily with me.com and other email providers.

It's not a given that users will have bothered to register for a Google account unless they grew up in the Bay Area after a certain time period.

Wind back the clock to when Google tried to roll out Hangouts and the Gmail penetration rate was even lower among the non-Android users out there.

I'm just thinking of my own friends and family, who are mostly not tech nerds and none of whom live in the Bay area. Gmail launched with so much more storage than any other free email service everyone thought it was an April Fools joke (no doubt in part because it was launched on April 1). Everybody wanted it, and nobody who got an invite code before I did would give me theirs.

This is all anecdotal of course. Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but how quickly they gave up was weird.

Gmail as a product was simple - a better version of Yahoo or Hotmail where you don't have to worry about storage size nor have to sort emails into various folders. Search worked magically and spam filters were better than anyone else. In short, UX was superior.

Hangouts UX sucked big time. I remember lots of frustrating sessions with my parents about why video calls weren't going through, or how can some random family member join our family thread when they don't have a Gmail account etc.

I didn't intend a comparison between Gmail and Hangouts, just to say a whole lot of people already had the required account.

You definitely had a rougher experience with it than I did, but my main point is Google launched it, didn't seriously iterate on it, and gave up its strongest distribution channel at the first sign of pressure from carriers. Since they keep launching messaging products, I must conclude they want to be in that space and it was foolish of them to squander their best opportunity.

> Search worked magically

Funny because now it doesn't. It routinely fails to surface emails that exist.

I remember laughing with colleagues as the first edition of the evening standard came in with the 1G gmail on the front page. I remember the exact location I saw it too.

couldn’t believe they had fallen for an April fools.

But that was a limited time window when gmail massively outweighed the 10-20mbit of things like hotmail with effectively unlimited storage.

> If you were using an Android phone, you were probably already logged in to a Google account.

Sure. But is it the same Google account that your relatives email you on, or a different one that only that phone is using? When you drop this phone are you going to sign into that same Google account or make a new one? The answers for non-technical users are non-obvious.

For technical users too. I always make a dedicated account for each phone (if I have to).

But then again I would likely opt out of Hangouts, so it’s not a problem.

It's possible to use Android as bundled with a Pixel device without a Google account, but it's a hassle because you can't use Play Store. You can use Aurora Store as an anonymous client, F-Droid for open source apps, APKs from download sites, or the like if you're so inclined, but all of those add significant effort or unreliability.

I’m actually using Aurora and F-Droid. The only reason I have a Google account on my phone is for the Wallet (though it doesn’t work for me anyway :’)

(And to be honest, things were working much smoother for me when I was on microG [0].)

[0]: https://microg.org/

I tried to daily a phone with MicroG for a while and had lots of trouble with location accuracy and speed. I tried out several third-party NLPs but never got acceptable results.

A lot of people have a google account because it is created when they setup the smartphone or enter the playstore for the first time for the first time but don't even realize it is not only a "smartphone account" and it gives them access to google workspace/gmail.

Is there any data that shows people in the US are switching to WhatsApp? The only people I've ever seen use it are people with family in other countries. The statistics I've seen indicate that iPhone usage amongst American teenagers is high and still increasing(1), which almost certainly would lead to higher iMessage usage.

(1) https://www.pipersandler.com/teens

how do imessage and android users communicate with each others? Do android users really still use sms to reach apple users? Don't they have group chats everywhere?

Here in europe every club/association/group has a whatsapp group chat. For instance here since the official app provided by the government has a super clunky UX most people get information from primary school through a whatsapp group chat managed by the parent's representative who has exclusive access to teaching group.

Yes, I text my brother who has an iphone. Thats our primary communication when not speaking.

As a counter to your question I've never used whatsapp and never saw a reason. What group chats? Are they groups of personal friends or mostly things you would 'follow' like a football club?

There is the parent's group for the school mentionnned above, my cycling club to discuss the upcoming rides/events and share pics (replace cycling with any kind of hobby you can think of), we have a family group chat with my parents and siblings, which are leaving in a different country as mine, an extended family in law group chat, comprised mostly of people living in another continent. At a former job we had a group chat that was meant to discuss anything not related to work, arrange out of office meetups. It sporadically served to share valuable information relative to work when there has been natural disaster so that people don't try to reach the office and stay at home. Much quicker than calling all employees.

Additionally whenever there is a social event a group chat is created so that people can discuss the organization, and after the event share their sentiments, pictures, videos.

It is never mandatory to participates in all those group chats but a lot of info go through them and they are usually useful. And the family group chats are great when you only get the chance to meet them more than a couple times a year.

Thanks for that information - it does seem to provide some good utility. And now that you mentioned it I recall my father uses it to talk to our polish relatives as that's the most convenient platform. I am not in that circle tho as I don't know polish haha.

Glad to hear they aren't mandatory, that would be my fear for certain things.

> 500M users paying $500M dollars

There's no way they actually earned $500M/year. Even if Whatsapp had 100 employees making $200k/year on average, that's $20M on salaries. Add an another very generous $80M on infra/admin etc costs and they'd have been making $400M profit. With that much profit achieved within such a short period, in the QE funny money era they could have IPO'd at $50-100 billion easily.

Correct. I used Android phones back then and so did all my family members and most of my friends. No one I knew paid a dime for Whatsapp.

I remember that the grace period was extended one or two times when it was time to pay, and then Facebook bought it.

I remember people being angered and threatening to leave if they had to pay that 1$/€ fee per year. And now here we are with ads.

The average person would rather view 100 adverts than pay 1 cent to get rid of them. We see it time and again.

The average company would rather charge that 1 cent and still show adverts. We see that time and again.

Do we see that? What I see again and again is companies pretending to make that offer and then adding ads anyway. You can only fool people so often.

They only had 55 employees when facebook bought them. I suspect their infrastructure costs were much less than you've suggested too. There's a reason whatsapp only supported one device: they didn't store messages after they were delivered.

I have not had someone ask me to use WhatsApp in nearly ten years, I deal with people on iMessage every day...

Africa runs on WhatsApp.

Went to South Africa on vacation last year. United lost our luggage on the first leg of the trip, which then became South African Airways responsibility to sort out because they handled our final leg.

I communicated directly with the SAA baggage agent over WhatsApp. Then communicated over WhatsApp with the courier delivering our bags . Best customer service ever.

I can predict the country you live in with reasonable reliability from this comment alone.

This would not be true most places outside of the USA and maybe Canada. In a few countries/regions it might be a different third-party messaging app.

Obviously, but the parent talks about Apple losing its US market to WhatsApp. Not sure that's remotely realistic, and them adding advertising only makes it even less realistic.

There was a recent interview (iirc maybe with Ben Thompson or at least he mentioned it) where Zuck said they were seeing their growth continue to accelerate in the US and it sounded like they’d be on track to overtake iMessage in a couple years if the rate continued.

Growth like that happens slowly and then quickly. I’m using WhatsApp more now and I didn’t use it before, so empirically I’ve seen the expansion personally.

Are you in North America? I’ve found this to be true in the US, but not in Europe or Asia.

Meanwhile in Europe it’s the opposite.

You can still survive without Facebook-crap perfectly. On the other hand it's hard to survive without either an Android or iPhone device.

Though doing without WhatsApp is getting dicey with a preschooler in a couple of activities, and it will probably get even harder to keep my heels dug in once he's in school...

Whatsapp is essential unless you’re a hermit and don’t have kids.

New drama club my youngest has joined only sends messages out on Facebook, which is even worse.

its pretty easy to "survive". Why do you make it seem like life and death??

Soon I will not be able to pay taxes without such a device. As everyone knows, without taxes, the only other remaining certainty is death.

i dont believe you. I bet there is a way, if you really press the authorities. They are so greedy for money that its certainly possible.

Survive, yes, but you will loose out on connections with other people. For some of us that is a price worth paying but it is still a price.

Similar situation as flights. People complain about lack of space, misc fees etc. But when it comes down to it, people for the most part, still pick the cheapest flight.

I think the other factor is a bit of anchoring. I know this impacts me anyways. If there is a "free" alternative, then that's where I'm anchored at. I can watch youtube for free so paying for it seems like a bad deal. Where as there is no free alternative to Coke that still gets your Coke (as opposed to say water).

> when it comes down to it, people for the most part, still pick the cheapest flight.

Flight comparators don't show "avaliable legroom" in their metrics.

As far as I know some companies charge more for seats near entrances where there's more space, so people are willing to pay more.

> As far as I know some companies charge more for seats near entrances where there's more space, so people are willing to pay more

In my anecdotal experience, the people complaining about leg room are precisely those who are not paying for additional leg room. (Similar to how people who compare modern air travel with service in the 1960s aren't purchasing the inflation-adjusted equivalent ticket, which would almost always be a lay-flat seat today if not Wheels Up.)

I may be the exception, but as someone who's 194cm tall I am both paying for more legroom and complaining about legroom.

Airlines aren't paying inflation-adjusted equivalents from the 1960s for their expenses either.

Google flights does - at least as well as they can base don the airline and plane. They'll also compare this to the average. All airlines charge more for exit rows and their extra legroom, typically as "premium economy" seats.

Premium economy is usually separate from exit row surcharges for economy class seats. Both are also relatively recent trends and I am not so sure that all airlines have caught up to the exit row squeeze.

> As far as I know some companies charge more for seats near entrances where there's more space, so people are willing to pay more.

Unfortunately those prices are usually not even close to proportional to the additional space (and even that would ignore that seating space is only part of the service).

I guess the point being Youtube versus Youtube without ads is as different as Coke versus water. But you're point holds in that people think they are the same service, as the ads bit, no matter how integral, is seen as 'other' than the service. This is a big win for the service provider. I remember when RyanAir charged £5 per flight plus £50 unavoidable add-ons, you ask anyone how much they paid, they said £5. Seems like the same thing here - we give the service provider too much kudos, it's as though consuming a service makes it part of us, so we big it up no matter if it's taking us for a ride.

People pick the cheapest flights because price is a simple number they can understand.

How to you qualify the comfort of a seat with 20cm of legroom vs 30cm? Until we have a quality metric for flights that's also a single number we can't.

The price is one of the few things that's always available when choosing between flights. Journey time is the other, and people will pay for a shorter journey or shorter layovers.

Strangely, some of my colleagues have 'paid' (work's money, their time) extra to avoid Ryanair, when Ryanair has the only direct connection. This I find strange.

Given the choice, I've long paid a little more if it means an Airbus plane, as I think the cabin is quieter. However, that's rarely shown on flight booking sites.

I'll happily pay more for an Airbus plane or even an older Boeing model because I prefer not to crash and die.

Yeah, I pretty much prefer to be surprised whenever the flight I’m on is scheduled on an A320neo compared to being surprised whenever a B737-Max is scheduled for my flight. That’s why I avoid flying with the airline that has a Boeing fleet in my country.

Ryanair are notorious for a) nickel-and-diming and b) general nastiness (e.g. charging a big fee to print a boarding pass at the airport, flying to an airport 70km from the city name they advertised, telling the press that they're going to start charging for the toilet). They're one of the few airlines whose reputation is big and extreme enough that it's percolated into the public consciousness.

It's easy to see where the flight is going.

Meanwhile, I get half a day free in Gdansk or Budapest or wherever while my colleague wanders around Munich Airport.

For the most part, people are not who make the airline the most profitable, companies paying employees to fly do.

Even then the second most profitable line of business for airlines are credit cards and the banks who buy miles in bulk for their customers. Of course this is a US perspective.

> People complain about lack of space, misc fees etc. But when it comes down to it, people for the most part, still pick the cheapest flight.

This is true. One thing I note is that with the same dollar amount, you get even less legroom, luggage, etc. today than you used to back 10-15 years ago on traditional airlines. Granted the airline costs rose over time, but it's hard to imagine they went up to the scale traditional airfare has increased at equivalent service levels... Also the fact that things that used to be included are now considered "extra" looks like a good excuse for folks to complain about.

Or because back then only credit card payment was possible?

>> I, as the “computer guy”, had friends and family asking how to pirate it.

To be fair, that was in era when pirating was such a normal thing. Everybody at least knew about it. Cheap pirated DVD's were super common (I received them as gifts even) and everyone knew someone selling them. With people accustomed to paying for Netflix, music streaming, Office 365, etc. maybe a subscription version of WhatsApp would be more palatable. The problem is nobody will pay as long as the tech behemoths are offering the same thing for free.

Interestingly, the pendulum at least in my friend group starts to kinda swing in the other direction, i.e. non-technical friends start to indirectly ask (me as the tech guy) about blatant piracy for (visual, Spotify is still very much accepted) media and (TOS-violating[1]) ad blockers for ad-supported streaming.

I cannot overstate how unexpected this was and is to me, we talk about people in their mid-twenties with jobs - maybe (video) streaming / subscriptions services actually overplayed their hand in the current economic climate.

Doesn't make me super optimistic in this regard.

[1] even if most of it is void in my jurisdiction anyway

Number of competing video services with distinct libraries has kinda put it back in vogue, I think. No one I've ever talked to is really happy about paying for more than 1-2 streaming services, especially if some of them only have one show they're interested in. If that show is really tempting it becomes tempting to just pirate Severance or what have you instead of signing up to one new service for it on top of Netflix et al.

In my experience people tend to just move between services. A month on Netflix, then a month with Disney etc. The convenience of having those apps built-in to TV's and easily installed on phones shouldn't be overlooked. If you want easy access to your pirated content from all your devices (including TV's, phones, tablets) you have to have a bit more tech experience and be willing to deal with a bit more inconvenience. For most just rotating services subscribed to is much easier.

Hell, VHS tapes and DVDs often had brief clips shown before the movie talking about how you can get free movies by pirating.

> ... Whatsapp became a paid app ... it was either €0.79 or €0.99, I’m not sure if one off or yearly payment, but it doesn’t matter ...

Interestingly, WhatsApp put up paid plans to slow down user acquisition [0].

On Androids, in some countries, WhatsApp continued to work even if you didn't pay the $1/year fee.

[0] https://youtu.be/8-pJa11YvCs?t=952

In Spain, most people who didn't pay in the first few days after the free period expired then received a free renewal.

In my case I don't remember having to let the trial period expire, it just got renewed automatically a couple times before WhatsApp became free.

I don't know any Android users who paid back then, only iPhone owners did.

When the Apple App store came along it was wild seeing how quickly software went from $10 down to 0.99c in the space of less than a year. And then it was only a matter of time before it dropped to zero. Once it hit zero, the tolerance for payment of any kind went to zero as well for a very large portion of people.

Apps and the internet in general, for most people, is considered almost weightless and zero cost. In the race for market dominance meant dropping the price as low as possible to drive out competition.

True. Yet, if you don't charge for the software itself, but instead you make that purchase only unlock a skin or some fake currency in that software, and worse, only have a small chance of being the one that user wants, suddenly people will pay 10, 20, or 100 dollars for your software, over and over again.

It's almost as if people are made of inconsistent meat

It's gambling at the core that's the issue here. We used to have robust regulation of it for decades (and it was recognized millennia ago that gambling is bad for societies anyway), the problem is that the global gambling industry moved far too fast for regulations to catch up - and now we're at a point where children, even toddlers are getting lured into gambling mechanisms. It's all lootboxes nowadays.

Personal take on it: that's all just preparing children for the inevitable fact that everything from education over employment and housing to dating is mostly depending on luck...

Agreed. Gambling laws are stuck at the notion that you need real cash payouts for an activity to be gambling when psychologically a database entry with enough lipstick can be just as enticing.

I'd really wish Apple would add a "Exclude apps with in-app purchase" filter to their app store. I don't mind paying for an app, I mind subscriptions and in-app purchases.

> I'd really wish Apple would add a "Exclude apps with in-app purchase" filter to their app store.

Unfortunately that would still exclude plenty of good apps. There are a ton which are “free” with limited options and then have a one-time in-app purchase to unlock the full thing.

Many good apps use subscription models still to great effect, if their user base is of the right type. E.g. overcast the podcast app. It makes excellent money because of the type of user who pays for it is looking for a premium experience. The $0 app thing is for race to the bottom style app markets, which, let’s be honest, has always been that way.

Consumer stance on paying for software has changed drastically now because of AI. Even outside of utility software like Chat GPT, people are paying for image generators etc.

I that paying for software or paying for a service? When I pay Netflix it’s not because of their app.

Theres hundreds of apps utilising AI for simple consumer apps. And yes people are paying

https://app.sensortower.com/overview/6449750416?country=US

A lot of normal consumers pay $20 a month for ChatGPT. I think most software gets bid down in price bc the marginal costs are zero. Where it’s not (llm token generation) prices don’t plummet and consumers build a different expectation.

Please define "a lot". In term of percentage of users connected to the internet worldwide, I don't even think it reaches a percent.

Sounds like my memories of being the computer guy in Italy.

I don't think you can make the conclusion you make.

In this case the service started as free (and thereby training people that it costs nothing) and and only later tried to pull the rug out under people after locking them in via network effects. It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to financially reward such tactics.

It's also that people already pay ridiculous amounts of money for their own internet connection. There is no reason why with A paying for internet and B paying for internet that A and B should pay again just to be able to talk to each other. Of course the technical reality is different but that's at least partially due to how WhatsApp designed their system.

all my family paid happily for Whatsapp. Then we got refunded because Facebook bought them. Now we get ads. Yay :)