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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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Counterargument: Google Docs. It's a 80% copy of MS Office, but it has managed to carve out a niche. Why can't a small, fast and free copy of MS Office do the same?

To give a more complete answer, a lot of these products used to exist, but were slowly discontinued, not because of some grand conspiracy to make people pay more but because they didn't sell. Probably the best example was Photoshop Elements. Yes, you could d a lot with Photoshop but yes, it was expensive software designed for the professional market. So Adobe came out with a stripped-down version designed for consumers. It didn't sell, and wasn't widely adopted despite being bundled with a number of consumer-grade digital cameras. The reason it didn't sell well is that if you advertise something as lacking features, the consumer feels like they're missing out on something. And usually they are. Every digital photography handbook out there talked about curves and how useful they were. Elements, however did not have this feature. Why? Well, there are other ways to adjust contrast and the like that will get you 80% of the way there, which should be good enough for most people, and they need to keep something exclusive to the full version. Sure, the average user may only need 15% of the features, but it's a different 15% for each user, and if you distill a product to only the basic features that everyone uses, you get a product that doesn't work for anybody but the most basic user.

The one suggestion I've seen to combat this has been to make the software modular, so that you download a version with basic functionality but can install modules for more advanced features. This doesn't work either. In the late 2000s iTunes was the king of the digital media players but was starting to get slow and bloated. The best free alternatives were MediaMonkey (which had the best kind of paid tier—not essential but absolutely worth the modest cost) and MusicBee, both of which realized that the marketing features and store were to blame; they got rid of this crap but otherwise offered products with even more features than iTunes. Winamp, with its totally stripped-down nature, predated iTunes and had widespread adoption. After it was formally discontinued, it was ressurected as Foobar, which kept the bare-bones functionality but offered a modular design so that more advanced users could expand functionality. I tried using this, mainly because it seemed to be what all the cool kids were doing. The problem I had was that it was a pain in the ass figuring out what modules I needed and then installing them. Want to do x? Download a plug-in and get it to work. Repeat 50 times. And this was with a piece of free software; imagine having to pay for each of these modules. Elements doesn't come with curves, but you can download a module for $30, or get it for an additional $2/month added on to your subscription. Repeat 50x. Suddenly full version looks like a good deal, and the modular version looks set up to nickle and dime consumers.

Of the three possibilities, living with the bloat is the one that makes the most sense. Look at the developer forums for any popular open-source software and they're loaded with feature requests. I don't see anyone responding that the software is perfect and don't add anything to increase bloat. Or keep everything as a separate plug-in because I like the version of Gimp that only lets me adjust tone and contrast and I don't want it bloated with your stupid curves and brushes.

Digital Audio Workstations still make those "stripped down versions". I think consumers also feel insulted that they're not getting the "real deal" version. What do you mean this consumer level bundled DAW is limiting me at 8 tracks? My creativity has no bounds, it cannot be held by only 8 tracks!

Never mind the fact that the majority of these consumers probably barely touch the software to begin with, and when they do use it, 8 tracks is likely more than enough. And that some of the greatest, most creative music of the 20th century has been recorded on 4 track analog recorders, let alone 8 tracks with the convenience of digital tools!

Because Google Docs already exists.

There are already free versions of all these. All of these are probably going to get better a lot quicker, but they still won't do the enterprise stuff that gets the big subscriptions

edit: this comment was made without seeing Brainwavez reply. Great minds, etc.

When Google Docs came out, Microsoft Office already existed. And these projects don't have to get massive enterprise subscriptions to have an impact, they just need to prevent other people from subscribing to existing suites.

I comment more extensively above, but Microsoft Works was a thing. And nobody bought it, because nobody wants to miss out on functionality. Google Docs has its fans, but I tried to rely on it for work (nay, a company I was contracted to wanted everyone to work in active shared documents so if work had to be reassigned someone else could jump right in) and it was brutal. I ended up just doing all my work in Office and uploading it as a Google Doc to turn it in.

I'm not sure your larger comment addresses the argument. Google Docs might not have worked out for you, but it apparently it has a billion active users. Any longpoast trying to explain why nobody wants it, is simply resting on a false premise.

Any longpoast trying to explain why nobody wants it, is simply resting on a false premise.

Google Docs apparently has 1 billion active users against 750 million for Microsoft Office. Yet, the same source says that there are only 6 million paid Google Workspace users. This is a conversion rate of 0.6%, compared to Microsoft's conversion rate of 100%, since they don't offer a free product, on 75% of Google's total user base. To put it another way, there are about 125 times as many paid Office users as paid Docs users. Also keep in mind that I would be included among those 1 billion users because there are still things I use it for, just not as a substitute for Office. But I wouldn't pay for the product, and evidently the vast majority of people are with me on that.

And that's the entire point. People have proven time and again that they aren't willing to pay for a stripped down product. The fact that they use it if given it for free is irrelevant.

Again, it doesn't matter if you generate subscriptions, it's enough if you prevent someone else from generating one. Especially that thia whole topic is about AI, and people generating their own software on the fly.

I am one of those billion active users, but as a tool that makes for easy sharing or quick projects that I do on my phone, not a replacement for Word or even Libre Office.

Because Google Docs already exists.

Or there are other alternatives: LibreOffice, OnlyOffice…this site list contains 7 more. And don’t forget LaTeX, Typst, and 100+ free markdown editors.

LibreOffice sucks, because no one wants to work for two months to fix a minor difference between it and Excel. LLM agents do not get tired and can get asymptotically closer and closer to the software they are cloning.

That's true. And AI could fork LibreOffice, but I suspect it would be faster and better to do a fresh port (and someone could test both, with barely any effort...but I'm not paying for the credits).

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