Index

The industry-standard creative suite, subscription-only since 2013, with rising prices and a $150M settlement over hidden cancellation fees.

Pro design, photo and layout apps that were famous for one-off pricing; now free under Canva, with AI tools behind Canva’s subscription.

Easy design for everyone, but team prices jumped up to 300% in 2024 and your designs only stay editable inside Canva.

Paid homework help losing students fast to AI chatbots; subscribers fell by almost a third in a year.

University courses online, now buying its biggest rival, Udemy.

The default container registry and toolchain, with steep price rises and new pull limits since 2024.

The file-sync pioneer, now pushing AI as its core business plateaus; your files remain easy to take elsewhere.

Free language learning turned gamified subscription: an energy system now limits how much free users can practise.

A steward-owned search engine that can’t be sold and spends its profits on climate projects.

End-to-end encrypted, open-source photo storage paid for by subscribers; the company can’t see your photos.

The original everything-notebook, now owned by Bending Spoons, with its free plan capped at 50 notes.

Fan wikis written by volunteers, wrapped in heavy ads, and big communities are leaving for independent hosts.

Paid, ad-free email on open standards, so you can bring your own domain and leave whenever you like.

Popular fitness trackers now owned by Google, which made moving your health data into a Google account mandatory.

A photographers’ community owned by SmugMug, funded by Pro subscriptions; free accounts have been capped at 1,000 photos since 2019.

The free app behind Garmin watches; a paid Connect+ tier arrived in 2025, but existing features stayed free.

A DRM-free PC game store: you download offline installers and keep them, no launcher required.

Launched with free unlimited storage; now part of paid Google One, and the default photo app on most Android phones.

The meditation app turned mental-health company, which moved its staff therapists onto part-time and contract work in 2024.

A nonprofit offering free lessons and practice for anyone, with no ads.

The free, open-source office suite from a nonprofit, now chosen by governments leaving Microsoft.

The largest shared e-scooter and e-bike network, newly public and still loss-making.

Ad-free, member-funded publishing, but your followers and distribution live on Medium’s terms.

Where local groups find members, but organizers pay more each year and can’t take their member list with them.

Meta’s chat app: your Facebook contacts are there, and your chats with Meta AI now feed its ad targeting.

The default office suite, now bundled with Copilot at a higher price whether you wanted the AI or not.

Microsoft’s assistant rides on Windows and Office defaults, and keeps getting installed where nobody asked for it.

Beloved games on Nintendo-only hardware, now with $80 games and a price rise for a console years into its life.

The question-driven dating site, now one of Match Group’s brands, with a regulator record on how it handled users’ data.

Microsoft’s cloud drive, built into Windows, which now switches on folder backup during setup without asking.

Connected bikes and classes behind a subscription, with a fee for used equipment, a price rise, and a shrinking member base.

A one-time-purchase iPad drawing app with no subscription, no ads, and a public pledge against generative AI.

Commission-free trading paid for by order flow, with a regulator settlement over gamified design.

A fast, private-by-default browser, protected on iPhone by rules that force every rival to run on Safari’s engine.

Ticketmaster’s main rival, with exclusive venue deals of its own and lawsuits over late-disclosed fees.

The social network for runners and cyclists, which in 2024 walled off its data from the third-party apps built around it.

Paid, open-source, end-to-end encrypted messaging that needs no phone number, now under private-equity ownership.

Travel reviews losing their search traffic to AI answers, with an activist investor pushing for a sale.

A marketplace for online courses that is cutting instructors’ share of subscription revenue from 25% to 15%.

A customisable, employee-owned browser that doesn’t track you and has refused to add generative AI.

Crowd-sourced traffic navigation, now folded into Google’s maps and ads organisation.

Bing-powered results with a new ad-supported AI answer engine, owned by private equity.

Two-sided travel marketplace: guest fees, host policies, and algorithmic ranking shift surplus toward the platform as inventory professionalizes.

Dominant marketplace: Prime lock-in, ad load in search results, and third-party seller fees show clear tilt toward extraction.

Cloud primitives at scale: egress fees, service sprawl, and enterprise discounts make migration costly once you’re deep.

Microsoft’s search layer—often a conduit into Copilot, Edge defaults, and Windows integration rather than neutral retrieval.

Open-protocol microblogging with chronological and custom feeds, no ads, and portable accounts—though $100M+ of venture money will eventually want a return.

OTA giant: aggressive merchandising, Genius loyalty nudges, and partner commissions typify scaled travel extraction.

Chromium fork pushing privacy and optional rewards—fewer trackers by default, but still a product with its own wallet, ads narrative, and ecosystem bets.

Differentiated dating brand with the same premium tiers, spotlight features, and engagement optimization as peers.

Block’s consumer wallet: simple P2P on top, but cross-sell into Bitcoin, stocks, and borrowing plus repeated fraud-handling penalties show users carrying the risk.

Flagship consumer LLM: free tier competes for attention; Plus, Team, and API convert habit into recurring revenue.

Dominant Chromium default—fast and compatible, tightly coupled to Google accounts, sync, and the ads ecosystem that funds the web’s biggest funnel.

Anthropic’s assistant: funded by subscriptions, not ads—but weekly usage caps and default training on chats count against it.

Strong real-time product for communities, but your social graph and server history are deeply embedded—switching means rebuilding social capital elsewhere.

Launched cheap with a deep back catalog; now on a yearly cycle of price rises, ad tiers, paid sharing, and bundle upsells.

Food delivery marketplace with fees stacked on restaurants and riders; convenience for diners, thin margins and policy fights everywhere else.

Privacy-marketed search with lighter tracking; still a business that must fund results and experiments over time.

Mature marketplace leaning on promoted listings, managed payments, and seller standards that favour scale over hobbyists.

Open-source Matrix client; messages federate across servers you control, end-to-end encryption is on by default, and no single company can revoke access to your conversations.

PC storefront and launcher competing on cuts and exclusives—better for devs in spots, still a platform tax and account wall for players.

Craft marketplace with rising fees, offsite ads, and pressure on sellers to absorb marketing and transaction costs.

Self-serve events and ticketing—easy for organizers until fees, feature tiers, and payout rules become the product.

Legacy OTA family: bundling, member pricing, and supplier terms tilt the stack toward the intermediary.

The canonical enshittification case: a feed that once showed your friends now serves ads, recommended posts, and AI content to an ageing, shrinking audience.

Wholesale marketplace connecting independent brands with independent retailers; net-60 payment terms and free returns lower the barrier for small shops, though take rates remain substantial.

Dating app for open-minded adults; subscription-only with no ads, no dopamine-engineered swipe loops, and identity features built around consent rather than engagement maximisation.

Collaborative design in the browser; files, libraries, and plugins embed teams so deeply that leaving feels like a migration project.

Open-source browser with privacy-forward defaults and no ad-tech parent; Mozilla’s funding model is fragile but the user-facing product still skews toward surplus over extraction.

Developer hosting platform built on open container standards with transparent usage-based pricing; VC-backed but designed to avoid the proprietary lock-in that defines AWS and Vercel's moats.

Google’s LLM family bundled with Workspace and Android: utility rises with account depth; free use feeds the broader ad and data stack.

Open-source publishing platform run by a nonprofit foundation; self-hostable for free, Ghost Pro managed hosting funds the foundation without taking a cut of creator revenue.

Default forge for open source: Copilot, Actions minutes, and enterprise tiers monetize workflow lock-in.

Open-core DevOps platform: self-host option preserves some exit, SaaS still pushes seat-based upsell.

Free email with powerful search, paid behind Workspace; ads and AI features tie identity to Google’s broader stack.

The default map for most of the world: superb data and routing, increasingly packed with promoted pins, ads, and Gemini features built around Google's priorities.

Once best-in-class retrieval; now cluttered with SERP features, ads, and SEO sludge—users get the residual junk.

Niche network with Xtra/Unlimited paywalls, ad load, and privacy history that undermines user trust.

Designed-to-be-deleted marketing meets roses, boosts, and subscription gates—dating app economics in a nicer skin.

Outdoor accommodation marketplace for camping, glamping, and farm stays; host-aligned fee structure and a niche that resists the race-to-the-bottom commoditisation of hotel OTAs.

Expedia-owned OTA: rewards stamps and merchandising follow the same commission-and-upsell playbook as sister brands.

Apple ID–tied mail: works well inside the garden; storage tiers and device bundle pressure nudge paid iCloud+.

Canonical film/TV metadata within Amazon—indispensable lookups with ads, Prime nudges, and data leverage across commerce and streaming.

Photo sharing turned short-video storefront: Reels, ads, and shopping crowd out the people you follow, while Meta's AI and ad systems mine every interaction.

Nonprofit digital library behind the Wayback Machine: free, ad-free, and run for preservation—under constant legal and financial pressure rather than profit pressure.

Indie game marketplace where creators set their own price and revenue split—including 0% to the platform; bootstrapped, no ads, and structurally hostile to extraction by design.

Paid, ad-free search funded by subscribers instead of advertisers—you are the customer, so the results are tuned for you.

Tips and memberships with lighter branding than Patreon; Gold tier and shop features add platform dependency over time.

The default résumé graph for many industries, increasingly monetized via feed ads, recruiter tools, and upsells—users are the inventory.

Event management and ticketing platform popular with tech communities; free for organisers hosting free events, clean UX, no dark-pattern upsells—VC-backed but behavior is still user-aligned.

US rideshare duopoly player; take rates, incentives, and driver dynamics mirror Uber’s two-sided squeeze with regional variation.

Federated microblogging with no single owner; rough edges, but user surplus and exit to other instances is real.

A capable Chromium browser wrapped in Microsoft's funnel: Bing and Copilot defaults, a sponsored news feed, shopping prompts, and nagging to stay.

Creator-owned streaming platform run by Standard Broadcast; subscription-only with no ads and a revenue share that returns the majority to creators—rare structural alignment at scale.

Still a capable player, but ad tiers, password-policy tightening, and recurring price moves shift value from subscribers toward ARPU and shareholders.

Flexible docs and databases users love; leaving means migrating templates, permissions, and team workflows—sticky by design.

Local-first note-taking app; files stay on your device in plain Markdown, sync and publish are optional paid add-ons, and the core product is free for personal use with no VC pressure.

Local LLM runner that lets you download and run open-weight models on your own hardware; no API calls, no usage billing, no data leaving your machine—VC-backed but FOSS by design.

Creator subscriptions with high take rate and policy whiplash; payment processors and brand risk shape who can stay on platform.

Consumer inbox on the Microsoft graph: Microsoft 365 upsells, Focused Inbox, and account convergence toward paid bundles.

Membership platform: take rates, discovery limits, and policy risk sit between creators and their audiences.

Incumbent digital wallet: fees, holds on seller funds, and upsells push value toward the network and away from edge users.

Answer-first search with citations; Pro tier and publisher deals raise questions about who gets traffic and margin.

End-to-end encrypted email from a Swiss nonprofit-aligned foundation; free tier with no ads or scanning, paid plans fund the service without monetising user data.

Once a home for thoughtful expert answers; now machine-generated answers, ads, and an AI pivot crowd the human contributions that built it.

Mature platform shifting value toward advertisers, mods as unpaid labor, and product changes that prioritize engagement over quality.

Merchant platform still oriented toward independence, though app ecosystem, payments, and enterprise upsells add lock-in over time.

Still user-respecting by default, but growing reliance on the nonprofit’s roadmap and network effects builds soft lock-in.

Team chat that became the default layer for work comms; switching means migrating channels, bots, and ritualized workflows.

Default music app for many—great discovery and library UX; economics squeeze artists while pushing podcasts, ads, and tier upsells.

Once the default Q&A layer for programmers; the community-built corpus now mostly feeds AI tools, and new questions have all but stopped.

Dominant PC games client; strong library lock-in and social graph, still delivering real value to buyers.

Developer-first payments rails: pricing is real, but docs and APIs still deliver strong surplus to builders versus legacy processors.

Secondary ticket marketplace—liquidity and buyer protection on one side, fees and volatile pricing on the other.

Newsletter + payments with clearer creator cut than ad platforms; network features and video push toward fuller stack lock-in.

Fast clients and huge channels; optional E2EE and a semi-centralized model create a distinct trade-off between freedom and trust in the operator.

High fees, poor transparency, and an illegal monopoly leave fans worse off than a competitive market would.

The most effective attention machine yet: a recommendation feed that pays off for viewers while ads, TikTok Shop, and creator payout swings shift value to the platform.

Swipe economy: tiered subscriptions, boosts, and pay-to-play visibility monetize anxiety and asymmetry.

Real-time public transit app from Montreal: core trip planning stays free, funded by an optional subscription and agency partnerships instead of ads or data sales.

Live-streaming hub owned by Amazon: real community value, but shifting payout rules, storage caps, and ad pressure keep moving the goalposts on streamers.

Two-sided marketplace that captures a large slice from riders and drivers; convenience for users exists, but the economic surplus flows to the platform and investors.

Social P2P app folded into PayPal: instant transfer fees, crypto and card upsells, and default public feed history (since reined in).

Frontend cloud with stellar DX: usage-based billing and framework coupling can still surprise teams at scale.

Default chat for much of the world; phone-number identity and network effects make leaving socially costly, while Meta monetizes the ecosystem around it.

A nonprofit reader mission with volunteer editors; ads are off by default and the core reading experience still prioritizes users over rent extraction.

International money transfer service built around mid-market exchange rates and transparent flat fees; publicly traded and profitable without resorting to hidden FX spreads.

API paywalls, algorithmic feeds, verification products, and ad load shift surplus toward the operator and advertisers—classic extraction on a still-central public square.

Console ecosystem built on Game Pass value—now shaped by steep subscription price swings, pulled perks, and account lock-in around what “ownership” means.

Legacy free mail: heavy ads, pay-to-remove-ad tiers, and brand decay; still used as a durable address by many.

Unmatched library and creator economy, but ad load, Shorts push, and policy swings steadily tilt the experience toward Google’s revenue priorities.