Even if they don't use all the extra features, customers pay for all those extra bytes. The vast majority of commercial software shipments go to existing users who are less and less pleased with what they get. Well-established applications get larger and more difficult to use, and applications that expand the use of computers into new areas such as collaboration are rare. As a result, the software market for both individual users and business customers is becoming a replacement market with little growth.

Applications still don't work together as well as they should. Even copying and pasting can't always be relied on. If you're working with text, you will probably get the ASCII characters, but not always the fonts, styles, and sizes, and hardly ever the tabs, margins, and line spacing. If you're working with graphics, you'll probably get the lines and rectangles, but not always the colors or more complex curves, and rarely the alignment, grouping, or snap-to-grid information. Considering the difficulties at this trivial level of cooperation, it's not surprising that distributed applications used with diverse databases and hardware platforms over large networks have severe limitations from the point of view of both users and system administrators.

For example, programs written for traditional operating systems can implement limited collaboration capabilities, but they must use a complex conversion process that involves sending millions of bits over a single connection with one other computer. Two users in different locations can view and annotate a document using special tools, but only one can make real-time changes to the document itself, and there is little or no support for collaboration among more than two users.