Technology writing is one of the most accessible ways to start building a second income stream — while also becoming part of a global community of learners and builders.
Many platforms today pay for content such as:
✍️ Simple how-to guides → $50+ 💡 Product workflows & use cases → $100+ ⚙️ Engineering deep dives → $100–$350+
With tools like ChatGPT, writing and publishing can become a lightweight daily habit — just 15–30 minutes a day.
Technology writing is one of the most accessible ways to start building a second income stream — while also becoming part of a global community of learners and builders.
Many platforms today pay for content such as:
✍️ Simple how-to guides → $50+ 💡 Product workflows & use cases → $100+ ⚙️ Engineering deep dives → $100–$350+
With tools like ChatGPT, writing and publishing can become a lightweight daily habit — just 15–30 minutes a day.
Why this is bigger than income
Writing about technology helps you:
✅ Learn faster by sharing what you discover
🌱 Grow alongside other curious builders
🏗 Contribute to the open web knowledge ecosystem
🌍 Meet engineers, founders, creators, and product teams
📈 Build credibility over time through consistent value
This isn’t about “being a writer.” It’s about becoming a contributor.
“But I’m not technical…”
That’s okay — most people start there.
If you’ve ever used an app, explored a tool, or solved a small problem online, you already have something worth sharing.
The best content often comes from beginners documenting:
What they just learned
What confused them
How they figured it out
What could help someone else
Curiosity is enough to begin.
What we’re building
We’re launching a community-driven knowledge sharing platform to help people:
🧠 Find meaningful topics
✨ Write clearly and confidently
✍️ Publish with consistency
🚀 Start earning through real opportunities
No experience required. No tech background needed. Just a willingness to learn — together.
🔥 This is about learning, sharing, and growing in public — with real outcomes.
OpenSaaS started with the goal of increasing the usability and adoption of SaaS and open source. Focusing on usability first, we asked: What makes software usable?
Of course, it has to have the necessary features and good UX — but what after that?
Software usability cannot be defined or measured at any one point in time. It has to make its user’s life easier across lifecycle stages.
So we came up with the stages of the software buying and usage process first, and we published that here. You can download the sheet here too.
Now, coming to the premise: a good software should ideally make the life of its user smooth at all stages.
Most often, enterprise software is not won or lost on features. It is won or lost on friction.
The best SaaS products are not the ones with the longest feature lists — they are the ones that make life easier at every stage of the customer lifecycle:
Easier to discover
Easier to evaluate
Easier to onboard
Easier to govern
Easier to audit
Easier to renew
Easier to exit
That is what usability means in enterprise SaaS.
And that is why we built the SaaS Usability Index — a lifecycle-based evaluation framework that measures usability not as UI polish, but as:
Operational ease across the full buying and governance journey.
This post introduces the model, the scoring system, and the stage-based structure we can consider, and invites review and feedback from IT leaders, CIOs, procurement leaders, SaaS product managers, GTM team members, and founders to make it a robust framework.
Why we needed a framework?
Because SaaS usability is broken in most evaluations.
Most SaaS scorecards focus on surface-level questions:
Does it have feature X?
Does it integrate with tool Y?
Does it look modern?
But in real enterprise buying, usability failures happen somewhere else entirely:
Procurement stalls
Security rejects the tool
Onboarding drags for months
Access reviews become manual nightmares
Audits trigger chaos
Renewals become renegotiations
Exiting becomes impossible
The product didn’t fail because it lacked features. It failed because it created operational burden.
So the right question is:
Does this software reduce effort — or introduce new work?
Redefining Usability: Enterprise Usability Is Lifecycle Usability
In consumer apps, usability means:
Clean UI
Fast clicks
Intuitive flows
In enterprise SaaS, usability means something very different:
Fast approvals
Secure defaults
Low admin overhead
Audit readiness
Continuous governance
Predictable renewals
Safe exit paths
So we define usability as:
The degree to which a SaaS product makes life easy across every stage of adoption, operation, and governance.
That requires mapping usability to the buyer journey itself.
The SaaS Buying Journey Is the Real Usability Surface Area
Enterprise SaaS is not a single moment. It is a multi-year lifecycle:
Discovery
Vendor evaluation
Implementation
Identity configuration
Governance operations
Renewal economics
Exit and replacement
A usable SaaS product must perform across all seven.
This is the foundation of the Usability Index.
Introducing the SaaS Usability Index
The SaaS Usability Index evaluates usability across seven lifecycle stages, each with measurable controls.
Each metric is scored from:
0 = absent or unusable
3 = acceptable enterprise baseline
5 = best-in-class operational excellence
This produces:
Stage-level usability scores
An overall usability index
A diagnostic map of friction points
Stage-Level Usability: Where Software Must Make Life Easy
Let’s walk through the journey.
Stage 1: Pre-Purchase / Discovery
Goal: “Can I trust this product quickly?”
Usability begins before a demo. Your team is not even aware of the potential customer, so the only thing the customer can refer to is the content you have put on the web.
Does that generate enough confidence in the mind of the customer?
Important signals include:
Customer advocacy
Content showing thought leadership — white papers, case studies, presence at important events, etc.
Communities on various sites (GitHub, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.)
Self-service capability, which reduces friction
At discovery, buyers need clarity, confidence, and internal alignment.
My stand has been : Technology should simplfy, technology should empower, Technology should be the equlizer in the society, not the differentiator.
We built softwares help organizations become:
more efficient
more secure
more productive
more scalable
But in reality, in many cases people experience :
complexity instead of clarity
dependency instead of independence
tools instead of outcomes
compliance burden instead of control
Technology became something users serve — not something that serves them. Users had to learn systems, and those who could not stayed behind.
With AI finally, Tech is learning the humans way now technlogy is ready to serve its true purpose and fulfil it potential. After all, now any any can build an agent do anything and serve over the world at minimal cost – So tech has empowered people.
My belief: Freedom should the real measure of empowerment
And we are entering that era, AI agents are going to leave us time to do what we really want. but with the current strucures and processes we have can just tech alone make people free from their
We believe the future of enterprise technology must enable:
individuals to operate confidently
teams to execute without friction
organizations to reduce dependency on vendors and manual processes
institutions to retain sovereignty over their systems
freedom is not optional.
It is the foundation of resilience.
The Reality: Software Fails Not from Lack of Features, but Lack of Foundations
Most enterprise systems fail quietly.
Not because they are missing capabilities…
But because they break down across invisible gaps:
usability friction
workflow fragmentation
lack of trust
weak governance
operational fatigue
uncontrolled complexity
This leads to:
churn
shelfware
security exposure
compliance risk
loss of institutional control
Enterprise technology is not failing at intelligence.
It is failing at institutional usability and governance.
Why Labs
To solve this, we realized something fundamental:
This is not just a product problem.
This is not just a services problem.
This is a research problem.
The missing layer in enterprise software is not another tool.
It is the infrastructure that makes tools:
usable
trusted
repeatable
governable
enduring
That is why we created:
OpenAutonomyx Labs
What is OpenAutonomyx Labs?
OpenAutonomyx Labs is the research and systems foundation of People First Technologies.
It exists to build the missing infrastructure that enables digital systems to operate with:
continuous governance
verifiable trust
operational simplicity
institutional accountability
long-term adoption
Labs is where enterprise technology becomes:
repeatable, policy-bound, and people-serving by design.
Our Mission
OpenAutonomyx Labs advances the foundations that allow individuals and organizations to become:
independent
efficient
future-ready
while strengthening:
privacy
security
control
compliance
governance
Not through complexity…
But through repeatable systems that institutions can trust.
What Labs Studies (The People-First Gaps)
We focus on the systemic failures that prevent technology from empowering people:
Trust
Can systems prove reliability instead of demanding blind adoption?
Usability
Can enterprise software reduce cognitive burden instead of increasing it?
Governance
Can compliance be continuous and embedded rather than external and reactive?
Integration
Can systems work as coherent infrastructure rather than fragmented tools?
Accountability
Can every action be attributable, traceable, and reversible?
Retention
Can adoption become durable rather than temporary excitement?
What Labs Builds
Labs produces infrastructure, not hype.
trust registries
governance protocols
certification frameworks
policy-native architectures
institutional deployment standards
adoption durability systems
Our work makes enterprise technology:
simpler for people, safer for institutions, and stronger over time.
The Future We Are Building Toward
A world where enterprise systems do not create dependency…
But independence.
Where software is not a burden…
But an extension of institutional capability.
Where governance is not an afterthought…
But the operating layer.
Where autonomy is not chaos…
But controlled, auditable execution.
People First Technologies, Institutional-Scale Foundations
People First Technologies delivers solutions.
OpenAutonomyx Labs builds the foundation underneath them.
Together, they represent a new direction:
Enterprise technology that is governed, repeatable, and designed to empower people.
Why We Built OpenAutonomyx Labs
A Founder Narrative
Enterprise technology was supposed to make people more capable.
It was supposed to reduce friction, increase productivity, strengthen security, and give organizations more control over how they operate.
But over time, something changed.
Instead of empowering individuals and institutions, technology began to create a different reality:
more complexity
more dependency
more fragmentation
more compliance burden
more tools, but less clarity
In many organizations, software is no longer something people use confidently.
It has become something they endure.
The Hidden Failure of Enterprise Software
Most software doesn’t fail because it lacks features.
It fails because it lacks foundations.
The real breakdown happens in the invisible layers:
systems that don’t integrate
workflows that don’t stick
governance that arrives too late
trust that cannot be verified
complexity that compounds over time
Organizations buy platforms with hope.
But adoption fades.
Teams revert to manual workarounds.
Security becomes harder, not easier.
And the gap between capability and usability grows wider.
Churn is not just a business metric.
It is a signal of systemic failure.
Independence Is the Real Goal
At People First Technologies, we started with a simple belief:
The purpose of enterprise technology is to make individuals and organizations more independent.
Independent in their operations.
Independent in their governance.
Independent in their ability to adapt and scale without losing control.
Efficiency without sovereignty is fragility.
Automation without accountability is instability.
Technology that increases dependency is not progress.
The Missing Layer
As systems become more interconnected — and as AI becomes more embedded into workflows — the stakes are rising.
Digital systems are beginning to:
make decisions
enforce policies
move resources
interact with citizens
operate inside critical institutions
Yet the infrastructure required to govern these systems has not kept pace.
We have monitoring.
We have security tools.
We have compliance frameworks.
But we lack something deeper:
A foundational layer that makes computation institution-ready by design.
A layer where trust is verifiable.
Where governance is continuous.
Where actions are attributable.
Where systems remain usable over time.
Why a Lab
We realized this is not a feature problem.
And it is not a marketplace problem.
It is a research problem.
The next era of enterprise software will not be defined by more applications.
It will be defined by the infrastructure that makes applications:
coherent
governable
auditable
repeatable
enduring
That is why we built OpenAutonomyx Labs.
What OpenAutonomyx Labs Exists To Do
OpenAutonomyx Labs is the research foundation of People First Technologies.
It exists to close the fundamental gaps that determine whether digital systems succeed or fail:
trust
usability
governance
integration
accountability
adoption durability
We build frameworks and standards for governed digital execution — so that enterprise systems can operate safely, transparently, and institutionally.
Our goal is not novelty.
Our goal is permanence.
The World We Are Building Toward
We envision a world where technology strengthens institutions rather than overwhelming them.
Where software is not a source of fatigue, but a source of capability.
Where governance is embedded, not retroactive.
Where systems can evolve without losing trust.
Where individuals and organizations can operate with confidence, control, and independence.
Closing
OpenAutonomyx Labs was built on a simple conviction:
The future of enterprise technology must be people-serving, institution-ready, and governed by design.
We are building the foundations for that future.
OpenAutonomyx Labs Trust. Control. Endurance.
In many organizations, software is no longer something people use confidently.
It has become something they endure.
The Hidden Failure of Enterprise Software
Most software doesn’t fail because it lacks features.
It fails because it lacks foundations.
The real breakdown happens in the invisible layers:
systems that don’t integrate
workflows that don’t stick
governance that arrives too late
trust that cannot be verified
complexity that compounds over time
Organizations buy platforms with hope.
But adoption fades.
Teams revert to manual workarounds.
Security becomes harder, not easier.
And the gap between capability and usability grows wider.
Churn is not just a business metric.
It is a signal of systemic failure.
Independence Is the Real Goal
At OpenAutonomyx, we started with a simple belief:
The purpose of enterprise technology is to make individuals and organizations more independent.
Independent in their operations.
Independent in their governance.
Independent in their ability to scale without losing control.
Efficiency without sovereignty is fragility.
Automation without accountability is instability.
Technology that increases dependency is not progress.
Why We Created OpenAGX
To address this, OpenAutonomyx is building:
OpenAGX
OpenAGX is a foundational governance framework for digital systems — designed to close the gaps that cause:
unusable complexity
operational churn
trust failure
compliance breakdown
loss of institutional control
It is not another tool.
It is an infrastructure layer for governed, repeatable execution.
Why We Needed a Labs Hub
We realized OpenAGX could not be built like ordinary software.
This is not a feature problem.
And it is not a marketplace problem.
It is a research problem.
The next era of enterprise systems will require:
shared standards
verified trust layers
governance-native architectures
institutional adoption science
That is why OpenAutonomyx funds and operates:
The OpenAutonomyx Labs Hub
The Labs Hub is the research and development environment where OpenAGX is advanced, tested, and institutionalized.
It is where foundational work happens before systems are deployed into the real world.
What the Labs Hub Exists to Do
The Labs Hub focuses on the fundamental gaps that determine whether software succeeds or fails:
trust
usability
governance
integration
accountability
adoption durability
It produces:
trust registries
governance protocols
certification tiers
policy-native reference architectures
institutional deployment standards
Labs does not exist to ship hype.
It exists to build foundations.
The World We Are Building Toward
We envision a world where technology strengthens institutions rather than overwhelming them.
Where software is not a source of fatigue, but a source of capability.
Where governance is embedded, not retroactive.
Where systems can evolve without losing trust.
Where organizations can operate with confidence, control, and independence.
Closing
OpenAutonomyx was founded on a simple conviction:
Enterprise technology must become people-serving, institution-ready, and governed by design.
OpenAGX is the framework we are building.
And the Labs Hub is where that framework is researched, proven, and advanced.
OpenAutonomyx Building OpenAGX — the foundation for governed digital systems.
By Adopting the Newest , Most Advanced, Investor backed, Self hostable, Free ( dom), Open source applications hosted in the server of your choice, the database of your choice, and completely replicating the your current flow with minimal human supervision complete audit & traceabilty, unifying data from any source in any format and publishing in all forms and format on all destinations in a localised , personalized, contextual way giving the use the content and confidence do theurr work quicker so that you get time to do what more important to all of us – build a bettter.
In 2025, the “Save for Later” tab is no longer just a list of links—it’s a massive database of our digital identities. As browser bookmarking continues to feel archaic, a new generation of self-hosted tools has emerged to handle the load.1
If you are looking for the perfect link manager, you’ve likely narrowed it down to four major players: Linkwarden, Slash, Karakeep, and Linkding. Each has a distinct “personality” suited for different workflows. This guide breaks down exactly which one fits your needs.
1. Linkwarden: The Collaborative Archive
Linkwarden is the heavy-hitter of the group, designed for users who don’t just want to save a link, but want to preserve it forever.2 It sits at the intersection of a bookmark manager and a web archiver.3
Key Features:
Total Preservation: It automatically captures a PDF, PNG screenshot, and a SingleFile HTML version of every link.4 If the original site goes down, your copy stays live.
Structured Organization: Uses a hierarchy of Collections and sub-collections, making it feel more like a traditional filing system than a loose tag cloud.5
Team Focused: Offers robust multi-user support with granular permissions.6 It’s the best choice for teams or families sharing a research library.
Modern Reader Mode: Features a built-in reader that allows for annotations and highlighting directly on the saved content.7
Best For: Researchers, legal professionals, and teams who need a “permanent record” of the web.
2. Slash: The Navigation Shortcut
Slash (by yourselfhosted) takes a completely different approach. It isn’t a “hoarding” tool; it’s a productivity tool designed to help you navigate your most-used links at lightning speed using shortcuts.8
Key Features:
Human-Readable Aliases: Instead of searching for a link, you create a shortcut. Typing s/metrics can redirect you instantly to your Grafana dashboard.
The “Command” Workflow: It acts as a private “Go Link” service. You can use it as a custom search engine in your browser’s address bar.
Shared Shortcuts: Perfect for organizations where everyone needs to know where the “Company Handbook” or “Holiday Calendar” is located without digging through emails.
Best For: Power users and teams who want to replace manual searching with fast, keyword-based navigation.
3. Karakeep (formerly Hoarder): The AI Powerhouse9
Karakeep is currently the trendsetter in the self-hosted space. It is designed for the modern “data hoarder” who saves hundreds of items and has zero time to organize them manually.
Key Features:
AI Auto-Tagging: By integrating with LLMs (like OpenAI or local Ollama instances), Karakeep analyzes the content of a link and automatically tags and summarizes it.10
Pinterest-Style UI: Features a beautiful masonry grid layout that works exceptionally well for visual content like images and videos alongside standard links.11
Full-Text Search: It indexes the entire text of every page you save.12 You can search for a specific sentence you remember reading months ago.
Top-Tier Mobile App: Unlike many self-hosted tools, Karakeep has polished, native iOS and Android apps that make the “Share to…” experience seamless.13
Best For: Knowledge workers and enthusiasts who want an automated, visual “digital brain” that does the organizing for them.
4. Linkding: The Minimalist Speed King
Linkding is the favorite of the “less is more” crowd. It is a lightweight, high-performance tool that focuses on speed and simplicity above all else.
Key Features:
Performance: It is incredibly fast. Even with 10,000+ bookmarks, the search and UI remain instantaneous.
Low Footprint: Written in Python/Django, it uses almost no system resources, making it the perfect choice for a Raspberry Pi or a low-powered VPS.
Simple Tagging: No folders, no complex hierarchies—just a clean list with tags.
Readability Mode: Includes a minimalist reader mode and integrates with SingleFile for basic local archiving.14
Best For: Minimalists who want a fast, reliable, and “no-bloat” tool that stays out of their way.
2025 Comparison: At a Glance
Feature
Linkwarden
Slash
Karakeep
Linkding
Primary Goal
Archiving & Teams
Navigation Aliases
AI-Powered Discovery
Minimalist Speed
Organization
Folders & Tags
Collections
AI Tags & Lists
Simple Tags
Best View
Dashboard / Reader
List / Search
Masonry Grid
Clean List
Search
Full-Text
Alias / Title
Deep Full-Text
Title / Description
Preservation
PDF/PNG/HTML
Metadata Only
HTML / Snapshot
HTML (Optional)
Mobile App
PWA / 3rd Party
Browser Extension
Official Native App
PWA / 3rd Party
The Verdict: Which One Should You Install?
If you need a shared team library with permanent PDF backups: Install Linkwarden.15
If you want to reach your frequent sites by typing s/shortcuts: Install Slash.
If you want AI to automatically organize your “digital hoards” and need a great mobile app: Install Karakeep.16
If you just want a fast, simple link list that never slows down: Install Linkding.
Pro Tip: Many self-hosters actually run Linkding for their permanent, “boring” bookmarks and Karakeep for their daily “read-it-later” queue where the AI can help sort through the noise.
In the rapidly evolving world of no-code and low-code development, choosing the right platform can mean the difference between a tool that scales with your business and one that becomes a bottleneck. Two of the most prominent names in the space are Budibase and Glide (often searched as Glideapp).
While both allow you to build functional applications without writing traditional code, they cater to fundamentally different philosophies and use cases. This comprehensive guide compares Budibase and Glide across features, security, pricing, and governance to help you make an informed decision for 2026.
At a Glance: The Core Philosophy
Feature
Budibase
Glide
Primary Use Case
Internal tools, CRUD apps, & Admin panels
Mobile-first apps, Field tools, & CRMs
Best For
IT Teams & Developers (Low-code)
Non-technical users (No-code)
Data Source
SQL Databases, APIs, Internal DB
Google Sheets, Airtable, Excel, SQL
Deployment
Self-hosted or Cloud
Cloud-only (SaaS)
1. Feature Comparison: Web vs. Mobile-First
Budibase: The Internal Tool Powerhouse
Budibase is designed for speed and efficiency when building web-based internal tools. Its standout feature is the “Autogenerate” capability—you point it at a database table, and it builds a fully functional CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) interface in seconds.
Customization: Offers a high degree of control over UI components and layout.
Automation: Features a robust visual automation builder that supports webhooks and complex logic.
Form Builder: Exceptionally strong for multi-step forms and data validation.
Glide: The Spreadsheet Magician
Glide’s superpower is its simplicity. It treats your spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel) or Airtable as the “brain” of the app. If you can organize data in a row-and-column format, you can build a Glide app.
Mobile Experience: Glide apps are Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) that look and feel like native mobile apps.
AI Integration: Glide has made significant strides in 2025 with Glide AI, allowing users to integrate text recognition and automated data processing directly into workflows.
Computed Columns: Unique “logic” columns within the data editor allow for complex calculations without touching the source spreadsheet.
2. Integration Comparison: Deep Data vs. Spreadsheet Sync
Budibase Integrations
Budibase is a low-code platform at heart, meaning it prioritizes professional data sources.
Direct SQL: Native support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, and MongoDB.
REST API: Connect to virtually any external service via a robust API connector.
Budibase DB: An internal database (CouchDB-based) for those who don’t want to manage external infra.
Glide Integrations
Glide is the king of SaaS data.
Spreadsheets: Flawless sync with Google Sheets, Airtable, and Microsoft Excel.
Enterprise Data: Higher-tier plans support PostgreSQL and BigQuery.
Business Tools: Native integrations with Slack, Gmail, and Stripe are easier to set up for non-technical users than in Budibase.
3. Pricing: Which Offers Better Value?
Budibase Pricing (2025)
Budibase follows a per-creator/user model.
Free Plan: Unlimited apps, self-hostable (Open Source), and 5 users.
Premium: Starts around $50/month per creator + $5/month per user.
Enterprise: Custom pricing with unlimited everything and advanced governance.
Pro Tip: The Open Source version is essentially free forever if you manage the hosting.
Glide Pricing (2025)
Glide pricing is based on tiers and “updates” (actions taken within the app).
Free: Good for personal projects; limited to 10 users.
Maker ($60/mo): Ideal for community apps or MVPs.
Team ($125/mo): For small business internal tools.
Business ($249/mo): Includes 30 users and advanced data sources like SQL.
4. Security, Governance, and Compliance
This is where the two platforms diverge most sharply, especially for Enterprise IT departments.
Security Aspects
Budibase: Offers Self-Hosting via Docker or Kubernetes. This means your data never leaves your infrastructure—a massive requirement for industries like Finance or Healthcare.
Glide: A managed SaaS platform. While highly secure with data encryption at rest and in transit (HTTPS), you are ultimately trusting Glide’s cloud infrastructure (GCP).
Governance and Compliance
SSO & RBAC: Both platforms offer Single Sign-On (SAML, OIDC) and Role-Based Access Control, but Glide usually gates these behind Enterprise tiers. Budibase provides granular RBAC even in lower tiers.
Certifications: Budibase is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certified. Glide also maintains SOC 2 compliance and offers high-level security for enterprise customers.
Audit Logs: Budibase provides detailed audit logs, which are essential for tracking who changed what data in an internal tool environment.
5. Ease of Use: The Learning Curve
Glide: Near-zero learning curve. If you know how to use Excel formulas, you are 90% of the way there. You can launch a production-ready app in an afternoon.
Budibase: Moderate learning curve. You need a basic understanding of how databases work (tables, relationships, schemas). However, for a developer or IT admin, the environment feels more “pro” and less restrictive.
Final Verdict: Which One Should You Choose?
Choose Budibase if:
You need to build complex internal tools that connect to existing SQL databases.
Data privacy is your #1 priority (requires self-hosting).
You want an open-source foundation.
You need desktop-optimized admin panels and dashboards.
Choose Glide if:
You need a mobile-first app for field employees or customers.
Your data currently lives in Google Sheets or Airtable.
You are a non-developer who wants to launch fast.
You want to leverage AI-driven features with minimal setup.
Would you like me to create a customized implementation roadmap or a feature checklist tailored to your specific project requirements?
Content Is King: A Vision That Shaped the Internet
In January 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay titled “Content Is King,” published on the Microsoft website. You can read the full article here, but I’m sharing a few excerpts below to emphasize just how visionary the essay was. Long before social media, creators, or platforms existed, Gates predicted a content-led internet economy.
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” — Bill Gates
When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very broad. Computer software, for example, is a form of content—an extremely important one—and for Microsoft, it would remain the most important.
One of the most exciting aspects of the Internet, Gates noted, was that anyone with a PC and a modem could publish whatever content they created. In many ways, the Internet became the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier—allowing material to be duplicated at extremely low cost, regardless of audience size.
The Internet also enabled information to be distributed worldwide at almost zero marginal cost to publishers. The opportunities were remarkable, and many companies began laying plans to create content specifically for the Internet.
Gates argued that if people were expected to turn on a computer and read from a screen, they needed to be rewarded with deep, up-to-date, and interactive information. Content would need to include audio, possibly video, and opportunities for personal involvement that went far beyond what print media could offer.
Most importantly, he made a critical point:
“For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work.”
While the long-term prospects were promising, Gates anticipated short-term disappointment as content companies struggled to monetize through advertising or subscriptions. He believed interactive advertising would eventually work, since ads only needed to attract attention and could be measured through user engagement.
Those who succeeded, he concluded, would push the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products—a true marketplace of content.
How Content Actually Evolved
Today, we clearly see how content has evolved.
Content is how people discover you. It’s how attention flows. It’s how ideas spread.
Content is leverage. It works while you sleep.
However, content alone is not sufficient.
When anyone can publish content, the challenge becomes trust. How do we know which voices are authentic? Trust is not automatic on the internet—it takes time, consistency, and effort to build a credible online brand.
The Rise of Social Media and Community
This began to change with the advent of social media.
From roughly 2003 to 2011, platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube enabled people to connect with each other and evaluate one another’s content. Social proof emerged. Comments, shares, and followers became signals of credibility.
Creators who consistently produced high-quality content began to stand out and thrive. This shift laid the foundation for the creator economy—yet another outcome Bill Gates had effectively predicted in 1996.
Alongside content, interest-based communities started forming. People gathered around shared ideas, creators, and niches. Trust was no longer built in isolation—it was built socially.
Commerce: Making It Sustainable
But a fundamental question remained:
How do creators get paid? Where does the money come from?
That’s where commerce became essential.
Between 2011 and 2017, the rise of e-commerce and online marketplaces transformed the internet. Commerce made digital efforts tangible and sustainable.
When someone pays—even a small amount—it changes the relationship.
They’re invested. You’re accountable.
Commerce turns exploration into responsibility. It forces clarity. And most importantly, it gives builders the space to keep going.
The Internet Flywheel
This is how the system truly works:
Content brings people in
Community builds trust
Commerce creates sustainability
Sustainability enables better content
This flywheel is what powers long-term success on the internet. (Ref. hubspot flywheel)
The Next Revolution: AI and What Comes After
Now, another revolution is underway.
With AI dramatically lowering the barrier to content creation—and companies like Meta promoting AI-generated content—the internet is about to be flooded with more content than ever before.
As content becomes increasingly abundant, attention alone will lose value.
Which means community and commerce become even more important.
Trust, belonging, and value exchange—not just content—will define who wins next. Just because AI can answer almost anything does not mean content creators will lose value. It simply means creators will need to create more meaningful content.
People won’t follow you for information anymore. They’ll follow you for perspective, opinion, and advice.
Purely informational websites—such as product listing platforms or comparison sites like GSMArena—will struggle to thrive. AI can now generate detailed comparison tables in seconds. When information becomes abundant and instantaneous, its value drops.
What increases in value instead is human judgment.
This is where influencers and individual content creators will thrive. They provide context, experience, and perspective. And with AI tools at their disposal, creators can produce content faster, go deeper, and create significantly more value—for themselves, their communities, and the companies they collaborate with.
As a result, the creator economy isn’t shrinking—it’s expanding.
How Commerce Changes in an AI-First World
Now let’s talk about commerce.
Just because anyone can build software or an application with AI does not mean enterprise companies will lose their value. Quite the opposite.
Large organizations will now spend less time on basic execution and more time solving real-world, complex problems. With the cost of building software dramatically reduced, their focus will shift toward:
Strategy
Scale
Trust
Long-term impact
The companies that lean into this shift will play an even bigger role in shaping the future of humanity.
At the same time, the app economy built purely on API or UI wrappers will slowly fade. Products that add little differentiated value beyond a thin interface will struggle to survive.
What remains strong is the 3C flywheel—Content, Community, and Commerce—which now operates at an even faster pace of value creation.
Why I’m Writing This
I’m writing all of this to make one core point:
Community is the natural progression of content.
And that belief is why I’m launching My App Stack—a community-driven knowledge-sharing platform focused on the applications we use daily.
What this means, how it will work – Nothing figured out yet. I will write as I figure out.
I just want to take a moment to thank you all for the overwhelming support for my newsletter. It’s been just one article and only two days, and the number of subscribers is something I genuinely never imagined achieving.
This journey takes me back to October 21, when I first tried creating content. I chose video because
1. it’s more engaging than text 2. you can build a personal connection with viewers, 2. explain ideas more naturally, make them easier to understand.
Unfortunately, that attempt failed quite miserably. I ended up taking a month-long break and didn’t even announce my role change during that time.
(I’ve attached a link to that video—it’s scheduled to go live at 12 AM. Please feel free to ignore it, but it’s there if you’re curious.) – https://lnkd.in/gcBij-vw
What truly made the difference were the small words of encouragement from many of you. They helped me maintain some sense of continuity, which eventually led to this result. For me, this means a lot. Thank you for the encouragement—it gives me both the motivation and the responsibility to do deeper research and share more meaningful insights. This will be a continuous effort.
Now,Edition 2 of “Guiding Principles of Product Development” is coming soon, and it focuses on Data.
Do subscribe so it lands directly in your inbox as soon as it’s released. Thank you once again 🙏
Note: This is a copy of my post in LinkedIn and the newsletter is published there. To subscribe LinkedIn, Please click below. The difference is that its more curated content.
In the world of enterprise tech, some things are unpredictable—like the price of Bitcoin or when your favorite SaaS tool will change its UI for no reason. Other things are as certain as the sunrise. Case in point: Gartner’s latest AI Vendor Report, where Google has once again secured its spot at the top of the heap.
For those of us tracking the “AI Arms Race,” the results are less of a shock and more of a confirmation. Google isn’t just participating; they are setting the pace.
According to Gartner, Google’s dominance isn’t just about having a famous name. It’s about their integrated AI agent tech stack, which spans:
Advanced Reasoning Models: Leveraging the deep-bench power of Google DeepMind.
Scalable Infrastructure: Utilizing custom AI silicon (TPUs) that can handle the massive compute requirements of modern LLMs.
Agentic Frameworks: The ability to move beyond simple chatbots to “agents” that can proactively solve problems and personalize experiences.
A Leader Across the Board
It wasn’t just a single win. Google dominated across several 2025 Magic Quadrants:
Conversational AI Platforms: Positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision.
AI Application Development Platforms: Named a Leader for its ability to execute and scale.
Cloud Database Management Systems: A leader for the sixth year in a row, proving that AI is nothing without a unified data foundation.
“Google’s position reflects a market shift where a strong vision is the critical indicator of a platform’s ability to deliver transformative business value.” — Industry Analysis
Why Google Keeps Winning
The secret sauce seems to be integration. While other vendors offer “point solutions” (a great model here, a good database there), Google has built a “native fabric” where data, infrastructure, and AI co-process as one.
The Hardware Advantage: With the new “TorchTPU” initiative, Google is making its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) more developer-friendly by supporting PyTorch natively, directly challenging Nvidia’s dominance.
Vertex AI: Their platform for building AI models and agents is now seen as the “gold standard” for enterprises wanting to scale without the headache of fragmented tools.
What This Means for You
If you’re an enterprise leader, this report is a signal. The “wait and see” period of AI is over. The vendors have been vetted, the infrastructure is ready, and the “Agentic Enterprise” is the next frontier. Google has the pole position, but the real winners will be the companies that actually deploy these tools to solve real-world problems.
