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Products tend to be someone else's tool.

Like you hint at, though, a tool is useful immediately and without end (at a particular task - windows operating systems remain useful despite whatever current version is being sold), the product is often an attempt to continuously derive value from the tool (attach a time limited license, offer "upgrades", new features, etc.).

A service is more like a product than a tool - selling data is not something that a tool can (by itself) provide (unless you accept virtual or test data).

Attaching a product mindset to a tool then becomes a matter of complication/value reduction, vs a product mindset to a consumable, like a game, or dataset, where the value is at least constant, if not growing over time.

I.e., I'm not sure I agree that the "enshittification cycle" is the variable here - even in the age of AI the value e.g. of a stock image service is constant or growing, even if the LLM generation process dilutes the market.

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> Products tend to be someone else's tool

I like this. The question is really whether you're facing the "business end of the stick" or not (although stick isn't quite right here, because not all software has both ends).

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