I think rather than saying a company can only do one thing, one could argue a product should only do one thing to extract value from it:
1. One time payment
2. Subscription payments
3. Usage-based payments
4. Selling personal data (to other _products_)
5. Showing ads (based on data collected by the product itself or bought)
If Google makes a car in this world, they'd have the option of making the thing free and in turn it sells data they can use for their ad business, basically how I'd say they monetise Chrome (beyond that sweet web monopoly they get out of it).
I think that could potentially be a lot more honest, consumers would know exactly what price they pay. And it'd make it a bit harder to build and maintain a monopoly through strategic product portfolios.
Seems like there's an argument there that complex/hidden pricing schemes and the illusion of free are too much to ask the typical consumer to untangle, it'd therefore classify as consumer protection in my book.
I noticed that companies that run most of their business units as profit centers (where units also generate revenue from other units) seem to do better than those that have mostly revenue and cost centers and lots of politics in-between. So maybe we'd even get better products this way.
Edit: Upon reflection, what's difficult is defining what a product is in this model. My spontaneous approach is that a product is anything than you can choose or decline to use. If my smart TV maker says "well the home menu is a different product from the TV" - totally fine. Give consumers the choice of using a different home menu and you got a deal. If those two things are inseparably (by practical means) intertwined, it's one product.
1. One time payment
2. Subscription payments
3. Usage-based payments
4. Selling personal data (to other _products_)
5. Showing ads (based on data collected by the product itself or bought)
If Google makes a car in this world, they'd have the option of making the thing free and in turn it sells data they can use for their ad business, basically how I'd say they monetise Chrome (beyond that sweet web monopoly they get out of it).
I think that could potentially be a lot more honest, consumers would know exactly what price they pay. And it'd make it a bit harder to build and maintain a monopoly through strategic product portfolios.
Seems like there's an argument there that complex/hidden pricing schemes and the illusion of free are too much to ask the typical consumer to untangle, it'd therefore classify as consumer protection in my book.
I noticed that companies that run most of their business units as profit centers (where units also generate revenue from other units) seem to do better than those that have mostly revenue and cost centers and lots of politics in-between. So maybe we'd even get better products this way.
Edit: Upon reflection, what's difficult is defining what a product is in this model. My spontaneous approach is that a product is anything than you can choose or decline to use. If my smart TV maker says "well the home menu is a different product from the TV" - totally fine. Give consumers the choice of using a different home menu and you got a deal. If those two things are inseparably (by practical means) intertwined, it's one product.