Stage 3: Ripping you off

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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+.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.