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Can you expand on your spreadsheet analogy? I think Joel Spolsky explained the main Office moat well here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-th

Can you expand on your spreadsheet analogy? I think Joel Spolsky explained the main Office moat well here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-microsoft-office-file-formats-so-complicated-and-some-workarounds/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-micros... > ... it might take you weeks to change your page layout algorithm to accommodate it. If you don’t, customers will open their Word files in your clone and all the pages will be messed up. Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expectations. (I've seen people try a single keyboard shortcut, see that it doesn't work in a web-based application, and declare that whole thing "doesn't work".) Reimplementing all that stuff is really time consuming. There's also a strong network effect - if your company uses Office, you'll probably use it too. On the other hand, people don't have extremely specific expectations for LLMs because 1) they're fairly new and 2) they're almost always nondeterministic anyway. They don't care so much about using the same one as everyone they know or work with, because there's no network aspect of the product. I don't think the moats are similar.

pj_mukh 2y ago
"Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expectations." Interesting point, but to OP's point- This wasn't true when Office was first introduced and Office still created a domineering market share. In fact, I'd argue these moat-by-idiosyncracy features are a result of that market share. There is nothing stopping OpenAI from developing their own over time.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Does office actually have a moat? I thought the kids liked Google docs nowadays. (No opinion as to which is actually better, the actual thing people should do is write LaTeX in vim. You can even share documents! Just have everybody attach to the same tmux session and take turns).
  - ben_w 2y ago
    If you're writing a spreadsheet in LaTeX, I suspect something has gone very wrong somewhere along the line. Spreadsheets are as much a calculation environment as they are a table of figures, and if you're technical enough to be writing docs in LaTeX you should be doing the calculations in a more rigorous environment where you don't copy the formulas between cells.
    - wbl 2y ago
      Excel, the world's most popular functional programming language.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        Excel, the only IDE universally allowed on corporate devices
        antihipocrat 2y ago
        I'd argue the web browser falls into that category as well.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        In more modern times, although I'd say the barrier of entry is higher there. Plus most analogs would require additional procurement, to which the response for most business users would be "No, you're not a developer."
- jkaptur 2y ago
  Sure, there's nothing stopping any business from developing a moat. The Excel example doesn't make the case of OpenAI any clearer to me.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  > This wasn't true when Office was first introduced and Office still created a domineering market share It was absolutely true at that time, but Microsoft was already a behemoth monopoly with deep customer connections throughout enterprise and was uniquely positioned to overcome the moats of their otherwise fairly secure competitors, whose users were just as loyal then as the GP is describing about users now. Even if OpenAI could establish some kind of moat, office applications make for very poor analogy as to how they might or whether they need to.
- gavindean90 2y ago
  It totally was. Bit different. Excel has Lotus keybindings available to this day, the spreadsheet was the home computer’s 1st killer app and Microsoft killer it and took the market share.
ben_w 2y ago
> Can you expand on your spreadsheet analogy? Sure. (I've been coding long enough that what Joel writes about there just seems obvious to me: of course it happened like that, how else would it have?) So, a spreadsheet in the general sense — not necessarily compatible with Microsoft's, but one that works — is quite simple to code. Precisely because it's easy, that's not something you can sell directly, because anyone else can compete easily. And yet, Microsoft Office exists, and the Office suite is basically a cost of doing businesses. Microsoft got to be market-dominant enough to build all that complexity that became a moat, that made it hard to build a clone. Not the core tech of a spreadsheet, but everything else surrounding that core tech. OpenAI has a little bit of that, but not much. It's only a little because while their API is cool, it's so easy to work with that you can (I have) asked the original 3.5 chat model to write its own web UI. As it happens, mine is already out of date, because the real one can better handle markdown etc., so the same sorts of principles apply, even on a smaller scale like this where it's more of "keeping up in real time" rather than "349 page PDF file just to get started". OpenAI is iterating very effectively and very quickly with all the stuff around the LLM itself, the app, the ecosystem. But so is Anthropic, so is Apple, so is everyone — the buzz across the business world is "how are you going to integrate AI into your business?", which I suspect will go about the same as when it was "integrate the information superhighway" or "integrate apps", and what we have now in the business world is to the future of LLMs as Geocities was to the web: a glorious chaotic mess, upon which people cut their teeth in order to create the real value a decade later. In the meantime, OpenAI is one of several companies that has a good chance of building up enough complexity over time to become an incumbent by a combination of inertia and years of cruft. But also only a good chance. They may yet fail. > On the other hand, people don't have extremely specific expectations for LLMs because 1) they're fairly new and 2) they're almost always nondeterministic anyway. They don't care so much about using the same one as everyone they know or work with, because there's no network aspect of the product. For #1, I agree. That's why I don't want to bet if OpenAI is going to be to LLMs what Microsoft is to spreadsheets, or if they'll be as much a footnote to the future history of LLMs as Star Division was to spreadsheets. For #2, network effects… I'm not sure I agree with you, but this is just anecdotal, so YMMV: in my experience, OpenAI has the public eye, much more so than the others. It's ChatGPT, not Claude, certainly not grok, that people talk about. I've installed and used Phi-3 locally, but it's not a name I hear in public. Even in business settings, it's ChatGPT first, with GitHub Copilot and Claude limited to "and also", and the other LLMs don't even get named.

pj_mukh 2y ago

"Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expectations." Interesting point, but to OP's point- This wasn't true when Office was first introduced and Office still created a domineering market share. In fact, I'd argue these moat-by-idiosyncracy features are a result of that market share. There is nothing stopping OpenAI from developing their own over time.

bee_rider 2y ago
Does office actually have a moat? I thought the kids liked Google docs nowadays. (No opinion as to which is actually better, the actual thing people should do is write LaTeX in vim. You can even share documents! Just have everybody attach to the same tmux session and take turns).
- ben_w 2y ago
  If you're writing a spreadsheet in LaTeX, I suspect something has gone very wrong somewhere along the line. Spreadsheets are as much a calculation environment as they are a table of figures, and if you're technical enough to be writing docs in LaTeX you should be doing the calculations in a more rigorous environment where you don't copy the formulas between cells.
  - wbl 2y ago
    Excel, the world's most popular functional programming language.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Excel, the only IDE universally allowed on corporate devices
      - antihipocrat 2y ago
        I'd argue the web browser falls into that category as well.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        In more modern times, although I'd say the barrier of entry is higher there. Plus most analogs would require additional procurement, to which the response for most business users would be "No, you're not a developer."
jkaptur 2y ago
Sure, there's nothing stopping any business from developing a moat. The Excel example doesn't make the case of OpenAI any clearer to me.
swatcoder 2y ago
> This wasn't true when Office was first introduced and Office still created a domineering market share It was absolutely true at that time, but Microsoft was already a behemoth monopoly with deep customer connections throughout enterprise and was uniquely positioned to overcome the moats of their otherwise fairly secure competitors, whose users were just as loyal then as the GP is describing about users now. Even if OpenAI could establish some kind of moat, office applications make for very poor analogy as to how they might or whether they need to.
gavindean90 2y ago
It totally was. Bit different. Excel has Lotus keybindings available to this day, the spreadsheet was the home computer’s 1st killer app and Microsoft killer it and took the market share.

ben_w 2y ago

> Can you expand on your spreadsheet analogy? Sure. (I've been coding long enough that what Joel writes about there just seems obvious to me: of course it happened like that, how else would it have?) So, a spreadsheet in the general sense — not necessarily compatible with Microsoft's, but one that works — is quite simple to code. Precisely because it's easy, that's not something you can sell directly, because anyone else can compete easily. And yet, Microsoft Office exists, and the Office suite is basically a cost of doing businesses. Microsoft got to be market-dominant enough to build all that complexity that became a moat, that made it hard to build a clone. Not the core tech of a spreadsheet, but everything else surrounding that core tech. OpenAI has a little bit of that, but not much. It's only a little because while their API is cool, it's so easy to work with that you can (I have) asked the original 3.5 chat model to write its own web UI. As it happens, mine is already out of date, because the real one can better handle markdown etc., so the same sorts of principles apply, even on a smaller scale like this where it's more of "keeping up in real time" rather than "349 page PDF file just to get started". OpenAI is iterating very effectively and very quickly with all the stuff around the LLM itself, the app, the ecosystem. But so is Anthropic, so is Apple, so is everyone — the buzz across the business world is "how are you going to integrate AI into your business?", which I suspect will go about the same as when it was "integrate the information superhighway" or "integrate apps", and what we have now in the business world is to the future of LLMs as Geocities was to the web: a glorious chaotic mess, upon which people cut their teeth in order to create the real value a decade later. In the meantime, OpenAI is one of several companies that has a good chance of building up enough complexity over time to become an incumbent by a combination of inertia and years of cruft. But also only a good chance. They may yet fail. > On the other hand, people don't have extremely specific expectations for LLMs because 1) they're fairly new and 2) they're almost always nondeterministic anyway. They don't care so much about using the same one as everyone they know or work with, because there's no network aspect of the product. For #1, I agree. That's why I don't want to bet if OpenAI is going to be to LLMs what Microsoft is to spreadsheets, or if they'll be as much a footnote to the future history of LLMs as Star Division was to spreadsheets. For #2, network effects… I'm not sure I agree with you, but this is just anecdotal, so YMMV: in my experience, OpenAI has the public eye, much more so than the others. It's ChatGPT, not Claude, certainly not grok, that people talk about. I've installed and used Phi-3 locally, but it's not a name I hear in public. Even in business settings, it's ChatGPT first, with GitHub Copilot and Claude limited to "and also", and the other LLMs don't even get named.