Essays

Free is a hard genie to put back in the bottle.

When Microsoft charged $999 for Office in 1990, little did they dream that 16 years later, their greatest competitor would be a free office suite from Google—along with dozens of small, often free apps that individually did many of the same tasks as…

You know those ubiquitous chat bubbles in the lower right corner of websites? Next time you see one, there's a good chance it's powered by Intercom. A popular customer messaging platform, Intercom helps you help customers with automated messages as they navigate through your site, with handy…

When software escaped big box retailers, site-wide licensing, and IT department approval, suddenly all you needed to get a new tool was a credit card and a few dollars to spare. The rise of web apps turned software into a service, something you pay for every month instead of in one lump sum.

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A dollar today is worth a bit more than a dollar tomorrow, something we’ve learned from experience since childhood. Yet thanks in part to Moore’s Law, technology flipped the equation on its head. First appliances, then computers, then TVs and phones seemed to offer more and better features each…