Seems like many companies product quality has plummeted over the last few years. For example, Google (despite its flaws), used to have good products and services. Now they are virtually unusable.
My doctor sent me forms to my Gmail and I never got them. I looked it up and apparently Gmail has the document provider blocked so you literally cannot get medical forms. Stuff like this happens all the time now! Their search engine is nothing but sponsored ads now.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I just think it’s funny that capitalism ends up making much much worse products over time.
They also have an incentive to innovate or at least to provide a quality service while they’re growing.
But once they have a monopoly?
Why bother with the expense. If anyone comes up with a better alternative, the monopoly can buy the new technology / product / etc and shelve it, or just crush the new competitor.
That’s if crushing is even necessary. No competitor can get anywhere without capital: old capital is not always keen on investing in new industries; and new capital is not going to invest in the competition. There are some exceptions, but it depends on the market.
This is exactly what google does now. They buy up all competition and either shelve it completely, change it to extract as much profit as possible (usually ruining it), or never update it.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. I bet they bleed universities / colleges for new research that never makes it to the public.
There are lots of fairly good google services that just become unusable over time, like blogger. Never updated. Never replaced.
Google also shelves many of its own products, including some that are actually useful.