Except its not free. This is the lie no-one seems to understand.
Every product you buy has a % set aside for marketing. No company is sitting there thinking “oh look, free money just fell from the sky. Lets advertise so more people can have free stuff” or “oh, profits are up, lets put all those profits into advertising so people get even more free stuff”
But people don’t see seem to understand that no-one in advertising has an unlimited hole of cash they dip into to pay to advertise on sites so they can browse the site for free, you pay for reddit, etc every time you buy products!
The thing I’ve never understood is even just looking at Google, they’ve killed so many products when they could have monetised them better with a little thought.
Instead, we have a phone thats useless for music unless you subscribe, photo storage is headed the same way and its whole ‘smart’ eco system has been ruined because of shareholder greed!
Except if Google pulled there head out there arse and built a platform people wanted to use, they’d likely make more money than they’re making now. Yet they clearly don’t get it and think ‘cloud’ solves everything!
Sadly Apple knows it has no competition so they’re just screwing with anything that they can and claim it’s ‘revolutionary’ so they can re-sell the same devices and while home assistant works ok for those of us who like tinkering, it’s a long way from being user friendly. Never mind the lack of anything smart, like speakers, displays, that work out the box.
It’s just sad to see so much potential being ruined because of seemingly clueless companies!