It's useful to be able to talk about COGS, even in general terms, with a business. The first example given in this post, the two businesses with the same revenu

It's useful to be able to talk about COGS, even in general terms, with a business. The first example given in this post, the two businesses with the same revenue/loss but different COGS is a great example of why. I think another example of why is the move towards subscription pricing. Hear me out... In my experience (as a consumer), subscription pricing makes the most sense when there's a direct correspondence to COGS. Example: Dropbox, they're storing stuff for me over time, no one ever suggests Dropbox should be a one off purchase. Conversely, it always seems to be controversial when there isn't a direct correspondence to COGS, for example a piece of desktop software. Developers would likely say that support is classed as COGS, but I think that's quite debatable, most companies wouldn't class it as such. Then they might claim that upgrades to support new OSes are COGS, but that's not really true, you can sell upgrades. Maybe these are true, but they are certainly less convincing to consumers than times when there's an obvious ongoing cost. I wonder if developers looking at subscription pricing should be looking at how they can frame the pricing as clearly corresponding to a cost incurred?