One year of the Data Act, in one paragraph and one caveat

Saturday marks one year of the EU Data Act's application. The paragraph: exit fees are dead, switching is a right, contract terms measurably improved for anyone who renewed with the regulation behind their chair, and the legal industry treats the switching articles as the operative core. No exodus followed, because the cost of leaving a cloud was never mainly the fees; it was, and remains, the engineering.

The caveat: absence of exodus is not evidence of failure. The Act's value shows up in negotiations that end differently, not in migrations that happen, and negotiating power is invisible in market-share charts. Regulation that works quietly gets declared pointless by people reading the wrong metric.

The builder's read, one year on: bring the Act to every renewal, book zero savings from it directly, and keep building the portability the law cannot ship for you. Same read as last September. Some dispatches age by not needing to change.