Eh, practically every service will let you 'log in with google' (or equivalent) for free if you're the sort of user who prefers that to a password manager.

SaaS companies want to charge a lower price to price-sensitive customers like bootstrapping startups, and a higher price to price-insensitive customers like big corporations; and they need some way to draw the line. And the moment you've got time to waste on things like SOC2 that drive you towards SSO - you are a price-insensitive organisation.

It’s sort of funny to me that if you go back to the timeshare computer systems of the 70s, everyone took for granted that you logged into the “network” and then the access you had depended on the permissions your user had. Today, we log into our computers and then we spend lots of time every day juggling credentials for the third party services we use. And, to make it worse, companies expect you to use various SaaS apps for day-to-day life and then block (or the apps just don’t provide) all the means to automate repetitive tasks.

Oh yeah, that's indeed a step back when you compare it like this. Especially today, automation should be possible everywhere. There is no real reason for that. SaaS apps could just stop blocking that and everyone would be happy. Some just need to start...

"Login with X" is terrible because you don't much of a choice for X. Google is generally there but maybe I don't trust Google as a gatekeeper for everything I do on the Internet. I certainly don't trust Facebook, which tends to be the #2 spot for the "Login with X" option.