Garmin paywalls

If there is a reason to never buy a connected device, Garmin is surely making a case for it.

Karl Bode at Tech Dirt write Garmin CEO Hints More Paywalls And Enshittification Are Coming, Falsely Claims Users Love It:

We recently noted how device maker Garmin had decided to follow in the footsteps of Google’s Fitbit, and begin putting basic features behind an annoying subscription paywall to goose revenues. Garmin’s new “premium” Garmin+ tier takes several features users already enjoyed for free, put them behind a $7 per month paywall, and called it innovation.

Enshittification ahead. Because the competitor does it, they follow suit and claim the users like it. Who like to pay more for something they didn’t have to?

It’s a recurring theme. Sell a device, “connected”, and requiring to use your servers. And then later on it’s either “sorry it cost us too much you device is bricked” or it is “please pay more, pray I don’t alter the contract any further”. In many cases the connectivity is unecessary, but poor privacy law motivate greedy executive to froth at the mouth of the revenue from data collection. In the case of Garmin, they even use this as a way to push the feature no one want: “AI”, a feature that cost so much to operate that there has to be an extortion scheme somewhere.