| You asked about the ones I particularly hated.
I've switched to paid Kagi and I'd consider a paid video service too. I initially signed up for Hulu to get the add-free experience. Then they started showing adds anyway and I cancelled. Amazon Prime is a far degraded experience form what I initially got. The "free shipping" got entirely factored into increased prices. Prime video generally requires me to pay for anything I actually want to watch (if they have it in their catalog). Video streaming, in general, sucks now. I don't want to pay for a subscription just so I can watch one movie. I also don't want to get 15 different subscriptions for a reasonable lineup of shows. I ditched Spotify because I couldn't prevent it from auto-playing. Tidal is much better about that and they have better sound quality. They also pay their artist better. I moved to Apple when they initially introduced OSX. Since then they've been driving heavily back to the walled garden philosophy. Verizon was my telco for around 20 years. They suddenly decided that the phone I had been using for a year "wasn't compatible with their network" and kicked me off. It's not a product problem. It's a problem of companies creating virtual monopolies. They don't need to meet the technical legal definition of a monopoly; if something like network effects makes it difficult to move away from them or choose an other option they are de-facto a monopoly. |