Vendor Lock-In
When a system becomes so dependent on a specific vendor's products that switching away is prohibitively expensive or difficult. Convenience now, captivity later.
Origin
The concept traces to the early technology industry, where proprietary systems were designed to be incompatible with competitors' products. IBM mainframes in the 1960s exemplified early lock-in, followed by operating systems like Windows and Mac in the 1980s–90s, and databases such as Oracle in the 1990s, which used discounts and platform integration to attract customers before imposing expensive, high-maintenance dependency. The term "vendor lock-in" emerged in business and technology discourse by the 1980s to describe barriers—technical, financial, or operational—so high that customers become captive to a single provider.