[rhaway84773]

> For monthly, saas, products why would the price increase “to reflect value added to our products” since it’s a recurring fee it should always pay for new features to be added.

Without commenting on the specific of Google Workspace, in general, this makes sense if you’ve added a bunch of additional value.

In fact, ironically, Slack’s antitrust complaint against MS re: Teams is precisely the fact that they bundled all this additional functionality in without charging extra for it.

[xahrepap]

I think what your parent is saying (at least how I read it) is in the context of comparing it to boxed software. I buy MS Word 1995 for $100. Then they release added value and box it up as MS Word 1998 for $100. Then they release added value and box it up as MS Word 2000 for $100.

Now we pay $10/mo. If you average it out, it's not too different than just paying for the added value as it grows.

And worse, if I cancel I don't keep to keep using it without the added value. So I'm painted in a corner. It's objectively worse in that sense.

[warkdarrior]

You also pay for hosting of that software service (availability, security, etc.).

[prepend]

There should be a host component and a build component. Unless they increase the rate of development (they didn’t) it shouldn’t be a reason for a price increase.

This seems like they are using a marketing plan from the boxed software days to justify a price increase today. I wonder if there’s a 90s Microsoft person who was tasked with a back strategy after Google decided they wanted higher profits or slower growth or some reason that has nothing to do with reflecting value.

[xahrepap]

And that’s fair.. but worth pointing out I bought Diablo 2 Resurrected which I almost exclusively play online. Unless they release an expansion then I’m done paying them money.

I think there’s some places where SaaS makes a lot of sense. And storage costs and high data transfer volume…. It makes sense.

There’s a balance. Modern software leans too heavily to subscriptions though.