We are at the point in technology where supposedly revolutionary products are becoming eerily similar to the products they were supposed to surpass.
streaming. Netflix, Disney and other providers have raised prices. The packages available to consumers are now expensivemonsters, especially after discovering that advertisements offer more profit. There are people right now who actually pay to see ads. How did this happen?
Amazon Prime Video costs $9 a month and has no ads, unless it's Thursday Night Football. Amazon is currently discussing an ad-supported version of its Prime Video service, according to Wall Street Journal and it won't be free.
Paramount+ with Showtime which costs $12 a month has ads and some other shows include "short promotional breaks," according to the company. In plain Greek: ads.
Streaming had to be better and cheaper. I'm not sure what's going on anymore.
You can still have ad-free streaming, but the cost will become very high.
Something similar is happening with Uber.
Wired editor-in-chief Steven Levy, took a 2,95 mile Uber ride from downtown New York to the West Side to meet Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. When asked to estimate the cost of the ride, Khosrowshahi believed it to be $20. It turned out to be less than half of the actual price of $51,69.
Finally, there is the cloud, which at first promised cheaper and safer computing resources for the Companies. Of course there are huge benefits: You can turn your rented computing power on and off quickly as you need it. Real progress.
The other advantages that were originally touted – price and security – don't seem so solid lately.
Salesforce, the software provider marketing cloud, is raising prices this month. The cost of the Microsoft 365 cloud productivity suite is also rising, along with some Slack and Adobe cloud offerings. according to the CIO.
AWS will begin to charges customers per IPv4 address, a critical Internet protocol. Even before this decision, the cost of AWS was a major issue in corporate boardrooms.
As a fast-growing startup, Snap bought cloud and decided not to build its own infrastructure. In the roughly five years since it went public, the company has spent about $3 billion in Google and AWS cloud services. Those costs were Snap's second-biggest expense, after employee salaries.
What about security? Last month, Google, the third-largest cloud provider, began a pilot program where thousands of its employees cannot use work computers connected to the internet, according to CNBC.
The reason: Google is trying to reduce the risk of cyberattacks. If staff have computers disconnected from the Internet, hackers will not be able to break into them Appliances and gain access to sensitive data and software code, CNBC reports.
So cloud services are great for everyone but Google? Great ad for cloud sales.
A bit over the top on some issues.
Microsoft has increased Microsoft 365 prices in 2021 after 10 years https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/08/19/new-pricing-for-microsoft-365/. I don't think there is another product or service that hasn't gotten a raise for 10 years! There are also offers through partners with good discounts, especially if you need multiple licenses.
I have no opinion about the other companies.
The extra charge for IPv4 applies to all hosting companies. It's a directive from ICANN because they're running out of IPv4 and they want to force companies to use IPv6.
However, I agree with the ads on the subscription platforms. And I used to get annoyed by NOVA throwing ads (in frame) during the football game while I pay a lot of money for a subscription.