5 ms·
"Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expectations." Interesting point, but to OP's point- This wasn't true when Office was first introduce
by 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 agoDoes 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 agoIf 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 agoExcel, the world's most popular functional programming language.
- ethbr1 2y agoExcel, the only IDE universally allowed on corporate devices
- antihipocrat 2y agoI'd argue the web browser falls into that category as well.
- ethbr1 2y agoIn 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 agoSure, 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 agoIt 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.