‘Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription’ says HP CEO gunning for 2024’s Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al…::It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company’s CEO,
I haven’t purchased a new HP product since my Pavilion in 1998. I own an HP mini PC, but that was second hand. I’ll never ever ever buy any of their products ever again.
There are a LOT of such products. I don’t touch Sony anything because of the root kit scandal, and their consecutive legal mishaps, and I don’t touch ASUS after their lead designers left the company to be taken over by Wall Street, and et cetera. There’s becoming fewer honest alternatives to choose from all around. Is this an effect of capitalism, do you think? Could they be correlated somehow?
Part of it is an effect of capitalism. What we’re seeing across the tech space is exactly what has happened to retail, airlines, automotive, and even utilities… a company is doing well enough, but the investors want more return for basically doing nothing. Then there’s a hostile takeover or shareholder revolt, they install a board that is more compliant with value extraction at any cost to customers and/or their own workers, and presto! You’ve enshitifacated a company!
Shareholders (at least the big ones) don’t care about worker safety or customer satisfaction… this is what happened to Sears. The CEO gutted the company and then took a golden parachute away from the dumpster fire he created.