4 ms·

When you have millions or billions of customers, the marginal cost is the limiting factor. You can put a lot of R&D behind the product to beat competition. Bu

When you have millions or billions of customers, the marginal cost is the limiting factor. You can put a lot of R&D behind the product to beat competition. But there is not much competition on software quality. Why?

TeMPOraL 4y ago
Because almost no software starts with millions or billions of customers. Almost no software reaches that many users. Of the software that does, a lot of it is monetized indirectly (ads, telemetry, being a "value-add" for something else). And, importantly, because as much as it's natural for software to be commoditized (thanks to low natural barriers to entry), it's also the core goal for pretty much every software company to resist commoditization. This is especially pronounced with SaaS. One way or another, the users are to a degree a captive audience. Or, in other words, the software vendors don't give a flying fuck about performance, and ergonomics in general, because they don't have to - it's not like you can just switch to a competitor. Almost none of the software used by masses has a real alternative - there are always incompatibilities, feature mismatch, and data ownership issues that make it too big of a hassle for most people, most of the time.
dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
Lots of software has monopolistic tendencies and/or large switching costs. Most customers (outside of developers) don't have the ability to reliably ascertain the true quality of software, at least not before buying it (as they aren't software experts). And (especially for the worst software, aka "enterprise") the people buying it are not the people who will actually use the software, so there is little incentive to improve the UX of it beyond the bare minimum. And fundamentally... businesses don't compete on quality. They compete on profit.

4 ms·

When you have millions or billions of customers, the marginal cost is the limiting factor. You can put a lot of R&D behind the product to beat competition. Bu

by stephc_int13 4y ago

TeMPOraL 4y ago
Because almost no software starts with millions or billions of customers. Almost no software reaches that many users. Of the software that does, a lot of it is monetized indirectly (ads, telemetry, being a "value-add" for something else). And, importantly, because as much as it's natural for software to be commoditized (thanks to low natural barriers to entry), it's also the core goal for pretty much every software company to resist commoditization. This is especially pronounced with SaaS. One way or another, the users are to a degree a captive audience. Or, in other words, the software vendors don't give a flying fuck about performance, and ergonomics in general, because they don't have to - it's not like you can just switch to a competitor. Almost none of the software used by masses has a real alternative - there are always incompatibilities, feature mismatch, and data ownership issues that make it too big of a hassle for most people, most of the time.
dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
Lots of software has monopolistic tendencies and/or large switching costs. Most customers (outside of developers) don't have the ability to reliably ascertain the true quality of software, at least not before buying it (as they aren't software experts). And (especially for the worst software, aka "enterprise") the people buying it are not the people who will actually use the software, so there is little incentive to improve the UX of it beyond the bare minimum. And fundamentally... businesses don't compete on quality. They compete on profit.