Someone please explain how OpenAI is not Netscape 2026. They had first mover advantage but no network effect, no moat, and are racing to stay ahead of infinitely resourced incumbents.
Not GP, and not saying I agree with them, but it may be worth remembering that Netscape had 90% market share at one point. Active user count may not be the moat you imagine.
Adoption of web browsers was also much lower when Netscape was dominant. 90% marketshare is less meaningful if you're only 1% of the way to the potential market size. Peeling away users who talk to ChatGPT every day is very possible, but harder than getting someone whose never used an LLM before (but does use your OS, browser, phone...) to try yours first.
I think the even better analogy than browsers is search engines. There aren't any network effects or platform lock-in, but there is potential for a data flywheel, building a brand, and just getting users in the habit of using you. The results won't necessarily turn out the same - I think OpenAI's edge on results quality is a lot less than early Google over its competitors - but the shape of the competition is similar.
google search definitely has a moat. people build their websites to optimize for google's algorithm, therefore google users see better results -> google gets more users -> websites optimize for google -> repeat. Personally I never bother with 'bing SEO' or 'bing ppc ads'.
google search took over becuse all search engines sucked and theirs didn't in a few important ways. AND by default, ads over to the side, clean interface.
Now all search engines suck and google's sucks just as bad or worse than the rest.
If someone were to follow the original google playbook and make a search engine that helped people find things (eg by respecting the query syntax rather than making 'helpful' suggestions and dropping words the user included in their query) and kept the ads separate and out of the way of results. They might well make a monster. But this is old tech so nobody cares and everyone thinks google is unassailble even while nobody likes them anymore. Is there /any/ money in search? I thought so but I must be wrong for it to get this bad.
Google search still has at least one competitive advantage: their crawlers are least likely to be blocked so they have the biggest index. AFAIK reddit is indexed by google but blocks all other search crawlers.
Maybe! Switching search engines is also very easy, and the top story on the front page is someone no longer using Google, but we know in practice almost nobody does that. As technologists we're much more likely to switch and know people who would switch.
How many of those users are paying? Where is the profit? How many users will be willing to use ChatGPT if they had to pay? Might have to pull out the questions like its 2026.
Most people will stick to the free product. Claude isn't free and not widely known beyond tech circles. Gemini, despite being good, also has a marketing problem and most non technical users still default to chatgpt.com for their day to day AI usage but that can change as Google redirects users to Gemini from so many surfaces it owns
When they cost more to serve than they bring in, customer switching cost is vanishingly low, your competitor has revenue from other things and you don't.
> This plan may include ads. Learn more
> When will ads be available in ChatGPT?
We’re beginning in the US on February 9, 2026
> Starting in February, if ads personalization is turned on, ads will be personalized based on your chats and any context ChatGPT uses to respond to you. If memory is on, ChatGPT may save and use memories and reference recent chats when selecting an ad.
You pay 8 USD / month and have higher limits and ads
99% of normies aren't paying for ChatGPT, there's a reason why they're pushing heavy for corporate welfare + government contracts. They're unable to sell to consumers so now they'll selling to governments while trying to lock-in contracts that subsequent people can't easily dismantle.
"Anthropic" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and I think a lot of people would avoid it simply because it doesn't have a catchy name like OpenAI or ChatGPT. It's also far more fun to say "I did a Google search" than "I did a Duck Duck Go search", and one still dominates over the other no matter the privacy concerns or how easy it is to switch. People can be simple like that.
I’m not sure it matters in Anthropic’s case that much - even people who use Anthropic models rarely think of the company as “Anthropic”. Their Claude brand is very strong, so much so the website is https://claude.ai etc, and you commonly see discourse about the company’s models where the name Anthropic never even appears. It’s Claude, Claude, Claude all the way down.
Claude has impressive mindshare in many engineering disciplines too, and given how many open source projects are a play on its name I’m not sure I’d argue it isn’t catchy either. Certainly rolls off the tongue easier for me than “chatGPT” does, which even Sam Altman their CEO agrees is an awful product name they are stuck with.
I can’t. I think they are one viral TikTok away from the pendulum swinging to Chat Gemini, which for most people, the no cost version is perfectly adequate
Laptops also didn’t integrate special ed in mainstream classrooms. While it’s the right thing to do for other reasons, the net effect hasn’t been to make all kids experiences or learning better.
OpenAI is going to have to leapfrog everyone else with some kind of alien tech to remain viable. Nvidia is probably just saving face here and possibly hedging.
Some farmers probably lamented the rise of machines because they feared their strength would no longer be needed in the fields. These farmers were no doubt more concerned with their own usefulness as laborers than in the goals of the farm: to produce food.
If you program as labor, consider what you might build with no boss. You’re better equipped to start your own farm than you think.
Many of them might have been troubled by the fact that they couldn’t afford a tractor. Many small farms became a few big ones, and so it will go in software.
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