this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
417 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
85570 readers
3683 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
An incorrect take?
This isn't a business strategy unique to tech companies, it's used across multiple different industries.
Source: work in finance.
Yes, an incorrect take.
While the strategy is not new, the scale and speed is. Also, there wasn't an existing market that they're trying to capture (as opposed to services like Amazon or Uber).
The entire industry is doing the same thing and they're all losing. It's a race to the bottom and that is most certainly new (and stupid).
Not to mention that the cost of the unsubsidized product is insane. Hence, it's not an economically viable product.
So, you're saying it's a new kind of capitalist trick where they lose money by subsidizing the product in order to make it completely unprofitable for all of the other companies?
I have it on good authority that this is an incorrect take.
Nope. They subsidize the product so that people are more willing to pay, and they're betting that they have deeper pockets than the competition (hence, a race to the bottom). Once they can no longer subsidize the product, the idea is that you're so addicted to it (or you've integrated it so much to your product) that you'll pay the full price.
Except that no one will, because they're already increasing prices and people and companies are waking up to the fact the cost does not outweigh the benefits.