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Things we feel like we own but don't
Sometimes, I find myself daydreaming about a time long-gone when life was simpler and we owned the things we purchased. Unfortunately, that is not this day. No, no, today we rent some things, subscribe to others and on the rare occasion that we actually purchase a product, there's a good chance it'll be bricked within a few years. Gone are the days of buying quality-made products that we will pass on to our children and their children, for we now have the privledge of passing on our Hulu passwords and smart home devices that will be obsolete long before our children inherit them. I, for one, am saving up a stockpile of Google Home devices for the day that Google inevitably shuts down the service in favor of a new "Gemini" flavored smart speaker. My children will thank me for the antique collection.
Now, I'm obviously memeing a bit here, but it's also kind of true. A good portion of the things we think we own, we actually do not. The problem is that we feel like we own them, but we actually have no real ownership. We forget that at any moment they can be taken from us. So let's dive into some products that a lot of us pay for, but don't actually own.
Digital Distribution Platforms
Examples include: Steam, Epic Games, Origin (EA Games), Amazon Kindle, Audible, Apple Music (sometimes), Vudu
Digital distribution platforms are online platforms where customers can purchase digital media of many kinds. What makes these products unique is that you can't take the content you purchase out of their ecosystem. For example, if you purchase an eBook on Amazon Kindle, it's locked to the Kindle app. You cannot store that eBook on your harddrive for use on a different device later in the future. This obviously raises the question, "What happens if Amazon shuts down the Kindle app?" That's an excellent question, and one I cannot answer. And for the doubters out there, it's actually pretty common for tech companies to sunset (or shut down) software like this (more on this topic later.)
Let's use Steam as another example. For those who don't know, Steam, owned by Valve, is digital distribution platform that sells mostly PC video games along with some software products. In early 2024, Steam hit an astounding 33,675,229 concurrent users, beating their previous record by around 100k users. The crazy thing is that none of those users truly own the games they're playing. Steam uses a common method of locking products to their platform called Digital Rights Management (DRM). This stops people from being able to use the products outside of the Steam ecosystem. You have to have Steam installed to use the products. Many other "software as a service" (SaaS) companies do this.
Compare this to the experience of buying and playing video games in the past. To this day, I still have my childhood Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from the late 1980's. I own it and it still works all these years later. I took it out of the box last year, fired it up and played some games. It doesn't matter that Nintendo has completely stopped servicing NES systems, or that they have no financial interest in the old technology. They cannot shut down the product without coming into my house and taking it from me. Interestingly, when I fired up 1990's Dr. Mario, there were no game patches to install. Imagine.
Smart Home Devices
If you pay attention to Google at all, you know that the company is notorious for adopting a cycle of releasing and then sunsetting products. Just recently, they shut down Google Podcasts, which I really liked. You can search for a list of products Google has shut down in the last couple decades. The list includes products like Google Reader, Google+, Google Hangouts, Google Play Music, Google Code, Google Stadia, and more.
“What does this have to do with smart home devices?” I hear you say. Well apply this same logic to products like Google Home, and the lifespan of your expensive smart home hardware comes into question. What happens when services like Google assistant (recently rebranded to Google Gemini. See, it's already happening!), Amazon Alexa, Facebook Portal, etc. get shut down? That hardware you purchased is suddenly worthless. Side note on Google shutting down products: there is one Google product that would completely devastate me if it was to shut down: Gmail. Everything is connected to my Gmail account, and I honestly don’t know what would happen if Google was to somehow dissolve or nuke Gmail. I don’t think it will happen, but it’s scary to think that so much of my life is in their hands.
Subscriptions
This one may have some people confused, and I understand. After all, you only own a subscription as long as you pay for it and everyone knows that. So what’s the problem? The problem is that we come to rely on subscriptions, which, by their nature, are unstable.
A good example of this is the Adobe Creative Cloud. Many professionals rely on Adobe CC for their livelihood. I know I used to. This is all good until Adobe decides to shut down your favorite app. Like Google, Adobe has a track record of sunsetting popular apps. I worked at a company that heavily relied on Adobe XD, which is now dead.
A more likely scenario is that the subscription will change overtime without your consent. Updates to UI/UX, changes in functionality and increased subscription costs are all very real possibilities. Just the other day I went to log into a popular streaming app and realized they had removed the “Continue watching” section. At the end of the day this isn’t a huge deal, but it was super inconvenient. I mean, when I paid the annual subscription bill the service was one way, and now, mid-subscription, it has changed in a way that I don’t like. Imagine if you went and purchased a new car, but then 6 months late the dealership came and replaced your nice shiny rims with some plastic hub caps. They could make all sorts of excuses for why this was the best decision for the end user… but you paid for nice shiny rims. You should be able to keep your nice shiny rims.
Physical Goods
This one is super obvious, but pretty wild when you think about it. You don't own your leased vehicle. If you rent, you don't own your house. If you own a business and rent a space, you don't own that. You don't own that beachhouse you purchased a timeshare for. Some people don't even own their mobile phones. Any of these things can be yanked away from you for any number of reasons. I have family who were forced out of their rented house because the landlord wouldn't make repairs. I've heard stories of people who have to give their vehicle back because they can't afford the lease. Rental spaces for businesses increase in price as demand increases. We're essentially living on a prayer because the power is not in our own hands.
Conclusion
So, what am I supposing you should do with this information? Nothing, really. You can make your own decisions. But I fear that we have forgotten the value of actually owning things. It was so satisfying to finally pay off our vehicle and actually own it. The more streaming services I pay for, the more fondness I have for our meager DVD colection. I look at them and smile, because they're mine... and they will continue to be mine until I decide otherwise. No streaming service can remove them from my posession because their licensing agreement changed. Epic games can't spy on my computer while I play Dr. Mario on my NES. However, if my landlord decides not to renew my lease, I'll be homeless. At least I'll still have my DVD collection.