We all know how much of a resource hog windows/google chrome have become over the years and we all accepted it, because we were told this how modern software works.

And now suddenly as memory prices shot up, these companies are successfully able to optimise their software to reduce memory consumption.

Now the exact same thing has happened to your food and other grocery prices. The prices went up and you were told its because of inflation/wars/pandemic/trade issues, etc and while all of those are true, its not the whole picture.

The food companies are increasingly spending more and more money on advertising (hence the insane growth in revenue for Google/Facebook/Netflix/ etc), and all of this comes from the consumer's pocket. Since the pandemic, the number of channels where a typical company has to spend ad money has gone up sharply. It's not enough to just run ads on radio, TV, newspaper and google. You also need pay the neighbourhood aislop influencer, you also need to buy space on 20 different ecommerce website. You have to buy space on the delivery apps, on streaming platforms, on reddit, on pinterest, on your BMW X5's dashboard, and so on and so forth.

There is always the option to cut spending here, and they don't. In fact, sometimes, they increase the spending here, despite all the inflation concerns.

Example - https://www.marketingweek.com/nestle-more-better-investment/

So yeah. they could make groceries cheaper, but they choose not to.