Software Has Eaten The Media

As I wrote a year ago in The Rot Economy (and as I argued on the first episode of my podcast Better Offline), I believe that both public and private markets have become decoupled from the concept of "good business," ruled instead by a hunger for the eternal growth of revenue and market share, regardless of whether they're making a good product or treating humans as disposable in the process. This is why your Google search results seem worse, or you're seeing too many videos on Instagram, or why the App Store's "free" section is pumped full of microtransaction-laden apps that are most decidedly not free, or why your iPhone likes to nag you with ads for Apple products — because these companies must always demonstrate revenue growth, every quarter, without fail, to be regarded as "successful" in the eyes of the market. The Author seems to have made a valid point. Because company stock value has become the metric to gauge success of Management of company it has forced Management to keep the revenue and growth going up. When growth or revenue shows signs of leveling off the shenanigans begin and Tech Companies go off the the path of making good products or investing in R&D for the next product. They change license terms to go from sale of items to renting of items, be it hardware or software.