9 ms·

Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee

100 points by dariosalvi78 4y ago

college_physics 4y ago
please note that this additional subscription fee only applies to physical models. in the, increasingly popular metaverse version acceleration tuning is part of the base subscription.
MattDemers 4y ago
This is going to be like farmers voiding their tractors' warranties in order to get free software updates from some CIS country jailbreaker, isn't it?
- zhdc1 4y ago
  It’s essentially been like that in the tuner scene for a while. The only difference is that, instead of immediately opting for a chip or retune, you now have the option to pay a monthly fee to keep your warranty.
dmitriid 4y ago
All the dystopian nightmares are already here. A few more steps closer to paid doors to your apartment from Ubik: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to-open-it-said-five-cents-please https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
rosnd 4y ago
Is this not essentially just warranty for the increased failure rate that comes with the car being tuned? I guess we'll see if Mercedes is going to suddenly prevent third party tuners from doing this, but I guess not.
- jackmott42 4y ago
  Probably, but nothing is to stop a manufacturer from just doing this artificially and it would be hard to prove it one way or the other, since the end user would never have enough data. If $1,000ish every year was a reasonable cost based on increased warranty risk, that is a big increase in risk!
- mattlondon 4y ago
  If it was an option in the car, and you can turn it on but get a big warning that the warranty is void then sure. But I bet it isn't.
  - rosnd 4y ago
    That's certainly true of current ICE mercedes models, except for the big warning.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  If the price dropped over time as the warranty ticked away, eventually becoming free after the warranty expires, or if you could ask for it without paying in exchange for voiding your warranty, then this would be reasonable. But they didn't do either of those things.
nathanaldensr 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750228
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
323 4y ago
Contrary to HN I think it's a very good idea. Some people buy cars for status and bragging, so you need the car to be expensive. Others don't care. So instead of having too separate cars, you just sell the "base version" for $X and then sell "status upgrades". Like "skins" in video games. The bragging person will brag about the expensive subscription, just like some brag about their AMEX/Centurion/... credit card, while the regular person will get a cheaper car since it's price won't be artificially inflated to cater to the luxury segment.
- mnd999 4y ago
  That’s what they’ve been doing for years, without subscriptions. It even makes more sense since the car doesn’t contain the things you don’t want. It’s just pure greed and collusion and abuse of their position in the market to facilitate these things.
- joosters 4y ago
  That's a good point - I reckon Mercedes haven't thought this through fully yet. All cars have their branding and model number on display, perhaps what new cars will have is some kind of fancy electronic display on the back that shows the current model number. When you subscribe to the added extras, the display will show something different to let others know that your car is one of the special faster ones and, by extension, that you are better than the others !
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    A status tax is an excellent idea. Is it horrible and anti-consumer? Absolutely. Status hunger is a vice, and companies will figure out a way to exploit this in a more nuanced fashion, as it opens more revenue streams.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    Blue check?
- have_faith 4y ago
  You think it's a good idea that the performance of your car (and other features behind simple software flags) is remotely controlled by the manufacturer locking you into a relationship with them, giving them the ability to reduce the resale value of the car you "own" if you don't pay them an ongoing subscription? I don't think this is a model worth cheering about unless you're a shareholder.
sdo72 4y ago
I'm not sure how they come up with the idea, you buy it but you actually don't own it. I can't imagine if Apple sells us an iPhone with 3 cameras, and we have to pay 3 different subscription tiers to access to each of them.
- stillworks 4y ago
  Interesting anecdata… for quite some time it was possible to buy hardware from IBM with CPU cores locked and the buyer has to pay to unlock the cores. Not that all cores were locked, half of them were though.
snvzz 4y ago
The acceleration you needed wasn't there the moment you needed it most, because your subscription expired or your car couldn't get online to check that it was still active. And now you are dead. Safety is now software, on a subscription model.
- bipson 4y ago
  Nobody ever died because he did not have enough acceleration. That whole argument is as old and tired as it is wrong. Escaping from dangerous situations is not a thing. Speed got you in that situation in the first place.
  - hellisothers 4y ago
    I was traveling and rented an underpowered hybrid ford something that defaults to Eco mode every time you turn it on. I was waiting to turn left in crosstraffic and when I saw my chance hit the gas to go and I assure you I almost died due to lack of acceleration.
  - tester756 4y ago
    "Nobody ever"? Wouldn't such a thing be useful when overtaking?
    - jamesliudotcc 4y ago
      This is an SUV that can do 0 to 60 in 6.2. Those used to be sports car numbers not too long ago. 5.2 is ludicrous for anything without an electric motor. It is not as if this is a 90s Yugo. Some car magazine a while back did a side-by-side comparison of two Mercedes sedans, one with a V6 and the other with a V8. They were happier with the V6, because nobody can use the extra power given speed enforcement on highways. So do yourself a favor and just don't pay for it.
  - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
    I disagree. I am in a bad situation. I know my car. I either brake or accelerate to get out of this pickle. I choose to accelerate, based on what I know that the car can do, as that seems to be the safest. And it doesn't react the way I expect. Now I'm dead.
abstractbill 4y ago
We recently shopped for new home appliances and were surprised at how hard it is to find non-"smart" ones these days. At this point I think it's inevitable that some appliance features will require a subscription (e.g. your fridge's ice-maker is an additional $5/month).
- nazgulsenpai 4y ago
  I've heard this same sentiment for years but my refrigerator/freezer went out approx 3 months ago and I was dreading having to find a dumb replacement. But when I went to our local Lowe's, surprisingly there was only one smart refrigerator option out of the approx. 30 dumb units. So I was able to easily purchase a nice, high quality, dumb replacement. Obviously that's just anecdotal, but was a pleasant surprise.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It is very quick and easy to filter options on homedepot.com, Lowes.com, Costco.com, and BestBuy.com to see many non smart fridges available for purchase.
- thisiscorrect 4y ago
  Most people are terrible at pricing an item over its full lifetime. A smaller cash outlay almost always attracts a sale, even if the item has a much shorter expected lifespan than a more expensive alternative, or will require constant repairs, etc. Seeing a low base price on a car, fridge, etc will sway people to buy an item even if there's now a larger operational expense. You're not just powering a device you own anymore but also "unlocking" the Ice Maker Feature(tm) for $5/month. This feels like businesses are trying to force everyone in the debt trap that keeps the poor where they are. Having to pay a monthly subscription for basic functionality isn't _that_ different from being in debt. But instead of floating consumers a loan, these companies are selling an item that selectively breaks if they miss a payment.
  - wilhil 4y ago
    Except I'm not seeing anything on subscription where you already own the hardware actually being sold for cheaper!
xiphias2 4y ago
Segmenting markets so heavily is just part of inflation in my eyes. Cars are a competitive market, so I don't agree with the pure greed sentiment. It's not like Apple or Google raising app store fees from 30% to 40%.
baybal2 4y ago
buran77 4y ago
On one hand cars have been sold with "same engine different tuning" for different prices for a long time now. Paying 5k extra to "own" the extra HP versus paying 5k in installments over the life of the vehicle to lease it only makes a difference if it turns out to be a loss over the same period for the buyer, or if the company is allowed to rescind the agreement. Tesla already brought this to mainstream in the auto industry by putting all the hardware in and then limiting its use or the battery capacity with a software switch. On the other hand even the most advantageous subscription today just eases people into this model which certainly opens the door for far more abuse in the future than straight ownership. Given where we are today with subscriptions I'd say that battle is already lost. People stopped owning their movies or music (that's after you realize that even having a physical copy doesn't mean ownership), and who knows how many other things. It's just one more software switch for a feature you rent rather than own.
- jamesliudotcc 4y ago
  I wonder how many people buy these things outright. Every time I see an ad for a luxury car, they tell you about the monthly payment. If you stop making the monthly payment, guess what? They take the whole car away. There are already GPS interlock systems where the dealer can shut down your car and locate it for collection, just in case of such a thing.
  - TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
    My husband and I purchased a new electric car last year. It is for this and many related reasons that we found the exact car we wanted, took the VIN to our bank, and walked into the dealership with a financing check. The dealer financing officer called our bank, gave them the price-out-the-door, and our bank gave them a PIN to write on the check alongside the total amount. We walked away without having any further relationship with the dealership. Despite this, they tried several times to get our written consent to run their own financing. We steadfastly refused. Not everyone is in a position to do this, but it was nice because we didn’t have to put up with any (other) dealer bullshit. (We did have to put up with other tangentially related dealer bullshit, which I have previously written about on here.) Edit: typo and context
TomVDB 4y ago
My Model Y has a $2000 in-app purchase option to increase acceleration by something like 0.5s. It’s not a subscription, but the idea is the same. It doesn’t bother me one bit: I bought the car knowing full well that it wasn’t included, I don’t need it (the standard acceleration is already more than I ever had before), end of story. Car engines have been under the control of software for decades now, with different products differing by the program. The only difference here is that there’s now the option to change the program over the air. Nobody would have complained if Mercedes had offered 2 versions without the option to upgrade.
- kadoban 4y ago
  My biggest issue with this kind of thing is resale. This kills resale value, because the company is going to be leeching a lot of that value with every transfer. They're not going to make the unlocks transferrable.
  - dahart 4y ago
    > This kills resale value Are you sure? I personally don’t like the subscription model for car features, but look at it this way: it means there will be more cars in the second-hand market that are capable of faster acceleration or seat-heating or whatever else is pay-walled. It means that people can pay for a lower model car, and then someone else can buy it and “upgrade” to the higher model. I don’t know or have evidence that this will help resale value, but it seems at least logically plausible that it could help resale by giving downstream purchasers more options than they might have otherwise. You’re right, it’s still true that the auto-maker is leeching some of the value with every transfer, and that unlocks won’t transfer, but I’m not sure that will hurt resale.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      > Are you sure? Pretty sure. As this continues, more and more things will be behind paywalls. The companies have every incentive to do this. Then more and more percentage of the value of the car is _not_ transferrable and will need to be paid (again) to the company by any new owner. You paid X thousand for "upgrades"? Great, that is completely lost money when you sell it. You can see this in the games market with DLC-heavy games. The physical copies of those aren't worth much because it doesn't even include most of the content. The effect you explain does exist I think, but to me seems to be obviously overpowered by the other(s) in the other direction.
louwrentius 4y ago
Maybe it rubs people the wrong way but this is only a natural evolution of capitalism: companies are constantly finding “new” ways to grow. Moving away from one-time purchases to a reoccurring payment model is just a logical next step, that is familiar in many other spaces. The end-games is that the vast majority won’t own anything at all and are stuck living paycheck to paycheck, being sucked dry by subscriptions. You see, what really matters in the end is shareholder value. And finding growth is therefore what only matters.
cs702 4y ago
Recent previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33692285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33692285 The top comment was about "subscription fatigue".
mslate 4y ago
Perhaps this type of calculated price discrimination will a) make the roads a little safer and b) encourage non-car transit.
wslh 4y ago
Subscription fatigue could transform in a regulation. I have a Muse S EEG device and yesterday I discovered that I need to subscribe to their monthly service for just recording my EEG without listening their meditations guides. I obviously can mute them or hack it. I understand that this is different from subsidized game consoles since I paid the full product.
- dahart 4y ago
  > or hack it I do wonder if auto-makers might suffer some subscription fatigue themselves in the near future when these electronic features get hacked and people enjoy them without paying. The danger of giving someone hardware capable of something and then artificially limiting it is that hardware can be modified, and arguably has stronger legal support for such modification.
  - wslh 4y ago
    Legal support details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering
danjc 4y ago
The birth of a new category - acceleration as a service. Perhaps future iterations will have usage-based billing and throttling based on an acceptable use policy.
woodpanel 4y ago
Hard to miss the irony that the place with the worlds highest density of beneficaries of such silicon valley driven business models drowns in outcry as soon as "old-industries" finally cought wind of it.

100 points by dariosalvi78 4y ago

please note that this additional subscription fee only applies to physical models. in the, increasingly popular metaverse version acceleration tuning is part of the base subscription.

MattDemers 4y ago

This is going to be like farmers voiding their tractors' warranties in order to get free software updates from some CIS country jailbreaker, isn't it?

zhdc1 4y ago
It’s essentially been like that in the tuner scene for a while. The only difference is that, instead of immediately opting for a chip or retune, you now have the option to pay a monthly fee to keep your warranty.

dmitriid 4y ago

All the dystopian nightmares are already here. A few more steps closer to paid doors to your apartment from Ubik: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to-open-it-said-five-cents-please https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...

rosnd 4y ago

Is this not essentially just warranty for the increased failure rate that comes with the car being tuned? I guess we'll see if Mercedes is going to suddenly prevent third party tuners from doing this, but I guess not.

jackmott42 4y ago
Probably, but nothing is to stop a manufacturer from just doing this artificially and it would be hard to prove it one way or the other, since the end user would never have enough data. If $1,000ish every year was a reasonable cost based on increased warranty risk, that is a big increase in risk!
mattlondon 4y ago
If it was an option in the car, and you can turn it on but get a big warning that the warranty is void then sure. But I bet it isn't.
- rosnd 4y ago
  That's certainly true of current ICE mercedes models, except for the big warning.
josephcsible 4y ago
If the price dropped over time as the warranty ticked away, eventually becoming free after the warranty expires, or if you could ask for it without paying in exchange for voiding your warranty, then this would be reasonable. But they didn't do either of those things.

nathanaldensr 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33722092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750228

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

323 4y ago

Contrary to HN I think it's a very good idea. Some people buy cars for status and bragging, so you need the car to be expensive. Others don't care. So instead of having too separate cars, you just sell the "base version" for $X and then sell "status upgrades". Like "skins" in video games. The bragging person will brag about the expensive subscription, just like some brag about their AMEX/Centurion/... credit card, while the regular person will get a cheaper car since it's price won't be artificially inflated to cater to the luxury segment.

mnd999 4y ago
That’s what they’ve been doing for years, without subscriptions. It even makes more sense since the car doesn’t contain the things you don’t want. It’s just pure greed and collusion and abuse of their position in the market to facilitate these things.
joosters 4y ago
That's a good point - I reckon Mercedes haven't thought this through fully yet. All cars have their branding and model number on display, perhaps what new cars will have is some kind of fancy electronic display on the back that shows the current model number. When you subscribe to the added extras, the display will show something different to let others know that your car is one of the special faster ones and, by extension, that you are better than the others !
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  A status tax is an excellent idea. Is it horrible and anti-consumer? Absolutely. Status hunger is a vice, and companies will figure out a way to exploit this in a more nuanced fashion, as it opens more revenue streams.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  Blue check?
have_faith 4y ago
You think it's a good idea that the performance of your car (and other features behind simple software flags) is remotely controlled by the manufacturer locking you into a relationship with them, giving them the ability to reduce the resale value of the car you "own" if you don't pay them an ongoing subscription? I don't think this is a model worth cheering about unless you're a shareholder.

sdo72 4y ago

I'm not sure how they come up with the idea, you buy it but you actually don't own it. I can't imagine if Apple sells us an iPhone with 3 cameras, and we have to pay 3 different subscription tiers to access to each of them.

stillworks 4y ago
Interesting anecdata… for quite some time it was possible to buy hardware from IBM with CPU cores locked and the buyer has to pay to unlock the cores. Not that all cores were locked, half of them were though.

snvzz 4y ago

The acceleration you needed wasn't there the moment you needed it most, because your subscription expired or your car couldn't get online to check that it was still active. And now you are dead. Safety is now software, on a subscription model.

bipson 4y ago
Nobody ever died because he did not have enough acceleration. That whole argument is as old and tired as it is wrong. Escaping from dangerous situations is not a thing. Speed got you in that situation in the first place.
- hellisothers 4y ago
  I was traveling and rented an underpowered hybrid ford something that defaults to Eco mode every time you turn it on. I was waiting to turn left in crosstraffic and when I saw my chance hit the gas to go and I assure you I almost died due to lack of acceleration.
- tester756 4y ago
  "Nobody ever"? Wouldn't such a thing be useful when overtaking?
  - jamesliudotcc 4y ago
    This is an SUV that can do 0 to 60 in 6.2. Those used to be sports car numbers not too long ago. 5.2 is ludicrous for anything without an electric motor. It is not as if this is a 90s Yugo. Some car magazine a while back did a side-by-side comparison of two Mercedes sedans, one with a V6 and the other with a V8. They were happier with the V6, because nobody can use the extra power given speed enforcement on highways. So do yourself a favor and just don't pay for it.
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  I disagree. I am in a bad situation. I know my car. I either brake or accelerate to get out of this pickle. I choose to accelerate, based on what I know that the car can do, as that seems to be the safest. And it doesn't react the way I expect. Now I'm dead.

abstractbill 4y ago

We recently shopped for new home appliances and were surprised at how hard it is to find non-"smart" ones these days. At this point I think it's inevitable that some appliance features will require a subscription (e.g. your fridge's ice-maker is an additional $5/month).

nazgulsenpai 4y ago
I've heard this same sentiment for years but my refrigerator/freezer went out approx 3 months ago and I was dreading having to find a dumb replacement. But when I went to our local Lowe's, surprisingly there was only one smart refrigerator option out of the approx. 30 dumb units. So I was able to easily purchase a nice, high quality, dumb replacement. Obviously that's just anecdotal, but was a pleasant surprise.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is very quick and easy to filter options on homedepot.com, Lowes.com, Costco.com, and BestBuy.com to see many non smart fridges available for purchase.
thisiscorrect 4y ago
Most people are terrible at pricing an item over its full lifetime. A smaller cash outlay almost always attracts a sale, even if the item has a much shorter expected lifespan than a more expensive alternative, or will require constant repairs, etc. Seeing a low base price on a car, fridge, etc will sway people to buy an item even if there's now a larger operational expense. You're not just powering a device you own anymore but also "unlocking" the Ice Maker Feature(tm) for $5/month. This feels like businesses are trying to force everyone in the debt trap that keeps the poor where they are. Having to pay a monthly subscription for basic functionality isn't _that_ different from being in debt. But instead of floating consumers a loan, these companies are selling an item that selectively breaks if they miss a payment.
- wilhil 4y ago
  Except I'm not seeing anything on subscription where you already own the hardware actually being sold for cheaper!

xiphias2 4y ago

Segmenting markets so heavily is just part of inflation in my eyes. Cars are a competitive market, so I don't agree with the pure greed sentiment. It's not like Apple or Google raising app store fees from 30% to 40%.

baybal2 4y ago

buran77 4y ago

On one hand cars have been sold with "same engine different tuning" for different prices for a long time now. Paying 5k extra to "own" the extra HP versus paying 5k in installments over the life of the vehicle to lease it only makes a difference if it turns out to be a loss over the same period for the buyer, or if the company is allowed to rescind the agreement. Tesla already brought this to mainstream in the auto industry by putting all the hardware in and then limiting its use or the battery capacity with a software switch. On the other hand even the most advantageous subscription today just eases people into this model which certainly opens the door for far more abuse in the future than straight ownership. Given where we are today with subscriptions I'd say that battle is already lost. People stopped owning their movies or music (that's after you realize that even having a physical copy doesn't mean ownership), and who knows how many other things. It's just one more software switch for a feature you rent rather than own.

jamesliudotcc 4y ago
I wonder how many people buy these things outright. Every time I see an ad for a luxury car, they tell you about the monthly payment. If you stop making the monthly payment, guess what? They take the whole car away. There are already GPS interlock systems where the dealer can shut down your car and locate it for collection, just in case of such a thing.
- TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
  My husband and I purchased a new electric car last year. It is for this and many related reasons that we found the exact car we wanted, took the VIN to our bank, and walked into the dealership with a financing check. The dealer financing officer called our bank, gave them the price-out-the-door, and our bank gave them a PIN to write on the check alongside the total amount. We walked away without having any further relationship with the dealership. Despite this, they tried several times to get our written consent to run their own financing. We steadfastly refused. Not everyone is in a position to do this, but it was nice because we didn’t have to put up with any (other) dealer bullshit. (We did have to put up with other tangentially related dealer bullshit, which I have previously written about on here.) Edit: typo and context

TomVDB 4y ago

My Model Y has a $2000 in-app purchase option to increase acceleration by something like 0.5s. It’s not a subscription, but the idea is the same. It doesn’t bother me one bit: I bought the car knowing full well that it wasn’t included, I don’t need it (the standard acceleration is already more than I ever had before), end of story. Car engines have been under the control of software for decades now, with different products differing by the program. The only difference here is that there’s now the option to change the program over the air. Nobody would have complained if Mercedes had offered 2 versions without the option to upgrade.

kadoban 4y ago
My biggest issue with this kind of thing is resale. This kills resale value, because the company is going to be leeching a lot of that value with every transfer. They're not going to make the unlocks transferrable.
- dahart 4y ago
  > This kills resale value Are you sure? I personally don’t like the subscription model for car features, but look at it this way: it means there will be more cars in the second-hand market that are capable of faster acceleration or seat-heating or whatever else is pay-walled. It means that people can pay for a lower model car, and then someone else can buy it and “upgrade” to the higher model. I don’t know or have evidence that this will help resale value, but it seems at least logically plausible that it could help resale by giving downstream purchasers more options than they might have otherwise. You’re right, it’s still true that the auto-maker is leeching some of the value with every transfer, and that unlocks won’t transfer, but I’m not sure that will hurt resale.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    > Are you sure? Pretty sure. As this continues, more and more things will be behind paywalls. The companies have every incentive to do this. Then more and more percentage of the value of the car is _not_ transferrable and will need to be paid (again) to the company by any new owner. You paid X thousand for "upgrades"? Great, that is completely lost money when you sell it. You can see this in the games market with DLC-heavy games. The physical copies of those aren't worth much because it doesn't even include most of the content. The effect you explain does exist I think, but to me seems to be obviously overpowered by the other(s) in the other direction.

louwrentius 4y ago

Maybe it rubs people the wrong way but this is only a natural evolution of capitalism: companies are constantly finding “new” ways to grow. Moving away from one-time purchases to a reoccurring payment model is just a logical next step, that is familiar in many other spaces. The end-games is that the vast majority won’t own anything at all and are stuck living paycheck to paycheck, being sucked dry by subscriptions. You see, what really matters in the end is shareholder value. And finding growth is therefore what only matters.

cs702 4y ago

Recent previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33692285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33692285 The top comment was about "subscription fatigue".

mslate 4y ago

Perhaps this type of calculated price discrimination will a) make the roads a little safer and b) encourage non-car transit.

wslh 4y ago

Subscription fatigue could transform in a regulation. I have a Muse S EEG device and yesterday I discovered that I need to subscribe to their monthly service for just recording my EEG without listening their meditations guides. I obviously can mute them or hack it. I understand that this is different from subsidized game consoles since I paid the full product.

dahart 4y ago
> or hack it I do wonder if auto-makers might suffer some subscription fatigue themselves in the near future when these electronic features get hacked and people enjoy them without paying. The danger of giving someone hardware capable of something and then artificially limiting it is that hardware can be modified, and arguably has stronger legal support for such modification.
- wslh 4y ago
  Legal support details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering

danjc 4y ago

The birth of a new category - acceleration as a service. Perhaps future iterations will have usage-based billing and throttling based on an acceptable use policy.

woodpanel 4y ago

Hard to miss the irony that the place with the worlds highest density of beneficaries of such silicon valley driven business models drowns in outcry as soon as "old-industries" finally cought wind of it.