That’s the dirty secret behind these business decisions. Making the product worse only ever seems to benefit the firm’s bottom line when a business is in a secure cartel.

This, as with enshittification in general, is a symptom of our fucked up culture that views money as a virtue. And with the business culture in particular, regardless of cartel or monopoly status, if the bottom line gets better the managers are doing a “good job” and almost nobody cares about inconveniences to customers or tarnishing of the brand.