ToolGuyd is a blog covering power tools, hand tools, and tool industry news, including cordless batteries, brand ownership, and recalls.
HN commenters recommend it for tool sale notifications and for following new tool releases, and cite its brand ownership info in battery lock-in discussions.
It's definitely vendor lockin. Sometimes the straightforward answer really is the right one.
As you said, Ryboi and Mikwaukee have the same owner, along with Ridgid [0]. They could have easily made batteries work across brands, and even added caveats to their marketing that your Milwaukee tools won't have full performance with Ryobi batteries (etc). But they didn't - because once someone buys into an ecosystem they get a strong affinity to continue buying in, rather than saving money and buying a less expensive tool that they need less. Market decommodification generally increases profits.
The main draw for the lockin, at least in my experience, is wanting a good supply of batteries to not run out in the middle of something. Whereas if I had many color tools and one or two batteries for each color, then I'd have to be much more attentive to keeping them charged.
Personally I bought into Dewalt. Then Dewalt 60V because I can use the batteries in 20V tools for longer yard work, etc. My one deviation has been the Ryobi powered PEX cincher, which Dewalt or anybody else didn't seem to have a comparable one. I bought it as a bare tool and added a Dewalt->Ryobi battery adapter. Occasionally I'll see more Ryobi stuff at great prices and be tempted, but I ask myself if I really need it, given that it's probably "less powerful" (half marketing, half truth) and the balance would be off (due to the adapter). Meanwhile a sale on a Dewalt tool that will make my life easier feels like a…
The patent[0] is over 20 years old so it should have expired regardless - except it got 11 years of extensions. That's a bit of an odd situation because SawStop was selling "patent-pending" saws since the very early 2000's...I'm not sure the extension guidelines were intended to give companies 30 years of exclusivity and protection - it would make more sense in a situation where they couldn't start profiting on the patent until the patent was finally granted. There's a reason they're supposed to be 20 years from "date of file" instead of "date of approval". The current system could encourage companies to try to get their patent applications tied up in appeals for as many decades as possible.
Regardless, it would have made sense for them to agree to FRAND [1] licensing >5 years ago which might have accelerated standards adoption.
From https://toolguyd.com/sawstop-patent-promise/ :
> I am a patent agent and I just took a look at the patent office history of the 9,724,840 patent. It is very interesting because it spent a long time (about 8 years) being appealed in the court system before it was allowed. While patents are provided with a 20 year life from their initial filing date (Mar 13, 2002 for this patent) there are laws that extend the life of the patent to compensate the inventor for delays that took place during prosecution. The patent office initially stated that the patent was entitled to 305 days of Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and that is what is printed on the…
There's third party services that performs reverse lookup of bad reviews to find the buyer identity and contact info. The whole purpose is to circumvent the Amazon customer contact process.
I left 1 star review for a product, and the seller tried continuously to solicit withdraw or revision of the review. I attempted to update the review calling out this behavior with screenshot of the email and Amazon wouldn't approve it. Ultimately, they replaced it with a product revision and immediately got another 20k reviews with near 5 star rating.
There's very little anonymity for buyers given all our digital crumbles. The entire digital economy's purpose is to track and identify you as a consumer. On top of this, how reviewers are paid via affiliates is the wrong incentive model. I'm not sure how this could be fixed, but I would be interested in a service that flipped the information asymmetry and gave me insight on the company selling the product and their trust worthiness. Company ownership would be icing on the cake since brands change hand so frequently (see example: https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/).
There is some consolidation among power tools
https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/
They still screw you on batteries and indeed would do so harder if there were fewer companies. Instead of incompatible batteries per brand it would be per year.
Sorry sir that's a 2022 tool it can't use 2021 batteries.
You can either ask congress to establish a standard, start a power tool company that supports more brands with adapters, or basically suck it up because selling batteries way over cost is extremely profitable and nobody wants actual competition in that space.
The one thing you don't want is consolidation. Likewise you think you want consolidation among browser engines but you really don't because it gives the vendor future leverage to fuck you.
As others have mentioned, SawStop can mitigate most of that risk (but not all - it's still possible to get kickback if you're not careful). I'd probably own a SawStop, if not for some of the questionable behavior if it's owner [1]. It's unfortunate, because they're very well made and designed saws.
You may want to check out the Bosch ReaXX, which has a similar tech in a portable job-site saw. SawStop is currently suing Bosch for patent infringement (which I don't fault them for; it was them trying to make it illegal to sell saws without their tech that didn't sit right with me).
[1] http://toolguyd.com/sawstops-stephen-gass-people-who-are-destroying-america/
and a followup that's more balanced:
http://toolguyd.com/sawstop-perspective-update/
I note the small power station listed in their accessories ...
Anyone interested in such a device should really consider the Dewalt Flexvolt power station (DCB1800B) because it lets you use your tool batteries as the modular, replaceable source of the power:
https://toolguyd.com/dewalt-portable-power-station-review-dcb1800/
... which is a nice intersection of utility. Output is a very strong 15 amps (although non-perfect-sine-wav) which I have used to start and power air compressors and other motors.
... and then you can use the batteries in your tools.
If you get the 9ah batteries you can run a fridge for a few hours. I find this setup to be much more utilitarian than a dedicated battery station