Also stop promising you are "open source and free" - "until you get market fit or VC money".
I'm fairness most projects who do that it tends to end badly for them. Just look at Elastic for a very high profile example
Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
51–60 of 363 posts
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#52I'm trying to cancel my Claude plan right now, because mid-research I got hit with a one hour time out for the first time, and I realized just how little I need the "expensive" research stuff and just want basic language refinement and some basic augmented knowledge search to get more terms to search the web. And all that basic stuff gets cutoff when you hit some invisible barrier that you have no way of controlling…
Google and OpenAI have done similar things with their LLM offerings. Gemini Advanced offered 2.5 Pro with nearly unlimited rate limits, then nerfed it to 100/day. OpenAI silently nerfed the maximum context window of reasoning models in their Pro plan. Accompanying the nerf is usually a psy op, like nerfing to 50/day then increasing it to 100/day so the anchoring effect reduces the grievance. It's a smart ploy because…
It’s not just switching costs though, what alternatives to Claude Code are as good right now?
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#53E.g.: Apple's new "iCare" offers "unlimited" repairs by subscribing for 20 USD / month! - note: "unlimited" does not mean free. quote source: "Apple Just Found a Way to Sell You Nothing" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytkk5NFZGjs
Pretty typical of Apple, and the reason for so is its users, whole world knows that Apple can charge premium and sometimes deliver it, sometimes cheaper competition is better or more durable.
Don't blame the company, it acts within boundaries allowed by its paying customers, and apple customers are known to be... much less critical of the company and its products to be polite, especially given its premium prices.
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#54I'm trying to cancel my Claude plan right now, because mid-research I got hit with a one hour time out for the first time, and I realized just how little I need the "expensive" research stuff and just want basic language refinement and some basic augmented knowledge search to get more terms to search the web. And all that basic stuff gets cutoff when you hit some invisible barrier that you have no way of controlling…
Google and OpenAI have done similar things with their LLM offerings. Gemini Advanced offered 2.5 Pro with nearly unlimited rate limits, then nerfed it to 100/day. OpenAI silently nerfed the maximum context window of reasoning models in their Pro plan. Accompanying the nerf is usually a psy op, like nerfing to 50/day then increasing it to 100/day so the anchoring effect reduces the grievance. It's a smart ploy because…
I had been loyal, but am not any longer, so the ploy definitely did not work with me. I guess I'll move on to Gemini now, until I get sick of it.
To the degree there is a moat, I do not think it will be effective at keeping people in. I had already been somewhat disillusioned with the AI hype, but now I am also disillusioned with the company who I thought was the best actor in the space. I am happy that there is unlikely to be a dominant single winner like there was for web search or for operating systems. That is, unless there's a significant technological jump, rather than the same gradual improvement that all the AI companies are making.
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#55When you offer "unlimited", you're immediately exposing yourself to the 0.1% of userbase that will absolutely treat it is unlimited. Whale users/hoarders. This has been a known problem since the dawn of hosting...hell, it goes back to times before computers. One thing I miss for the other users, i.e. the casual users that never use anywhere near of their quota, is rollover. If you haven't used your quota this month,…
> 0.1% of userbase that will absolutely treat it is unlimited. Whale users/hoarders
This is somewhat a different issue that’s largely accepted by courts and society bar that one neighbour who is incensed they can’t run a rack off their home internet that was marketed unlimited.
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#56I'm trying to cancel my Claude plan right now, because mid-research I got hit with a one hour time out for the first time, and I realized just how little I need the "expensive" research stuff and just want basic language refinement and some basic augmented knowledge search to get more terms to search the web. And all that basic stuff gets cutoff when you hit some invisible barrier that you have no way of controlling…
Google and OpenAI have done similar things with their LLM offerings. Gemini Advanced offered 2.5 Pro with nearly unlimited rate limits, then nerfed it to 100/day. OpenAI silently nerfed the maximum context window of reasoning models in their Pro plan. Accompanying the nerf is usually a psy op, like nerfing to 50/day then increasing it to 100/day so the anchoring effect reduces the grievance. It's a smart ploy because…
> the user does face provider switching costs (time and effort), which serves as a mini-moat for status quo provider.
When a provider gets memory working well, I expect them to use this to be a huge moat - ie. they won't let you migrate the memories, because rather than being human readable words they'll be unintelligible vectors.
I imagine they'll do the same via API so that the network has a memory of all previous requests for the same user.
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#57When you offer "unlimited", you're immediately exposing yourself to the 0.1% of userbase that will absolutely treat it is unlimited. Whale users/hoarders. This has been a known problem since the dawn of hosting...hell, it goes back to times before computers. One thing I miss for the other users, i.e. the casual users that never use anywhere near of their quota, is rollover. If you haven't used your quota this month,…
I hit the limit with a single set of queries yesterday, the very very first time I ever clicked on that "Research" button. And it stopped me from using any of their services at all, without warning. I am a very light user of queries, less than one a day on the cheaper models.
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#58Also stop promising you are "open source and free" - "until you get market fit or VC money".
I'm fairness most projects who do that it tends to end badly for them. Just look at Elastic for a very high profile example
Man that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. I remember the ELK stack
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#59I would absolutely do this if I ran anthropic. Of course unlimited implicitly means “unlimited without abuse.” There are always these “power users” who run it 25/8 and use all the resources, or sell access to others. To Anthropic: of course the “power users” are also going to be the top 5% of extremely online folks who are going to angrily pen long form tweet storms and this whole thing will die down soon for the oth…
> Of course unlimited implicitly means “unlimited without abuse.”
So, not unlimited? Like, if the abuse is separate from amount of use (like reselling; it can be against ToS to resell it even in tiny amounts) then sure, but if you're claiming "excessive" use is "abuse", then it is by any reasonable definition not unlimited.
Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”
#60"forever free" is another one.