There’s an idea in the technology industry that a lot of software is terrible to use because the buyer is not the user. This is frequently the case in software for very large companies, where purchasing decisions rest with a team or executive that’s far removed from the employees or customers that will actually use the software. They make decisions based on the information that’s available to them, the kind that fits on feature checklists rather than whether it sparks joy.

The recent push to regulate large tech companies, notably but not exclusively from the EU, is about aggregating the market power of consumers and using it to negotiate with big tech companies. Governments wish to regulate along the dimensions they can see rather than the more idiosyncratic desires of individuals. In other words the implicit negotation between a consumer tech platform and their users begins to resemble an enterprise software negotiation. The concerns of governments resemble the concerns of large enterprises: data ownership, extensibility, integrations and price. Where as consumers (and small businesses) tend to care about ease of use, experience and price.

Where they align is where I think they’ll have the most success - although not without qualifications. The best example of this is the drive against Apple’s app store comissions and anti-steering provisions. It is perhaps notable that this aligns nicely with one of Europe’s large consumer tech companies.

Where they don’t is likely to lead to strife for users. Particularly in enforcing interoperability and preventing integration. In proactively complying with the law as written, Apple has drawn ire for delaying the rollout of AI features in the EU. The vast majority of consumers don’t care about interoperability, they don’t have the time, inclination or knowledge to craft their perfect system. Despite this the what the average person has been able to accomplish with software has monotonically increased over time. Features that were once the realm of specialised software become table stakes. Most people would consider a word processor without spelling and grammar check as broken, but it was once a vibrant third party ecosystem because it wasn’t included at all. The same can be said for an operating system without a web browser. It’s an act of hubris to assume office software is ‘finished’ to the point where we know its boundaries and definitely doesn’t include a chat app. Integrating these features are trivial for an enterprise - adding third party spell check for example is just an extra line on a deployment script after specialists evaluated the most suitable solution. For consumers it means doing the full time job of these enterprise specialists across every aspect of their life - utterly untenable.

There’s an argument that everyone should be more like an enterprise - better able to evaluate total cost of ownership and rationally act in their own self interest. Enterprises also have more resources - in capital and labour to bring to bear. Making everyone function in the same way imposes real costs. Bringing the requirements of enterprise software will bring the joys enterprise software: bespoke editions with delays, fewer features and unpleasantly high prices.