Big Tech

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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