Not just in tech obviously, but this article more explicitly connects the dots for consumer facing retail products. Also mentions a couple cool apps/websites tracking this stuff like “Worse on Purpose.”
https://www.worseonpurpose.com/
From the article:
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When Keyana Sapp, 31, went shopping for a new backpack, the brands he remembered as a kid were just not the same.
He researched the companies, from North Face to JanSport and Eastpak, and soon realized they were all owned by the VF Corporation after a wave of acquisitions in the 2000s. After a Reddit post he made about his discovery picked up traction, he started looking at other types of consumer goods – cookware, shoes, tools, clothing.
“It seems like that was a story that just repeated in every industry,” Sapp told the Guardian.
Big conglomerates and private equity were buying up “trusted brands and riding that reputation out until it was a husk of what it was”.
From a zipper jam on a nearly new coat to a casserole dish cracking in the oven on its third use, Americans are finding that the quality of many once-beloved name brands are declining. Three-quarters of Americans had a quality or service issue in 2025, the National Consumer Rage Study found, double the rate since the survey started in 1976. And customer complaints have reached record levels, according to the latest University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/10/consumed-consumer-goods-quality