4 ms·

There's more to business than tech. There's more to business than product. The software behind Facebook as an app wasn't particularly unique, yet it eclipsed t

There's more to business than tech. There's more to business than product. The software behind Facebook as an app wasn't particularly unique, yet it eclipsed the competition. The same could be said for Google. Google didn't even have any real lock-in for years, but it still owned consumer mindshare, which gave it the vast majority of search traffic, which made it one of the most valuable companies in the world. ChatGPT is in a similar position. The fact of the matter is, the average person knows what ChatGPT is and how to use it. Many hundreds of millions of normal people use ChatGPT weekly, and the number is growing. The same cannot be said of Claude, DeepSeek, Grok, or the various open source models. And the gap is massive. It's not even close. It's like 400M weekly ChatGPT actives vs 30M monthly Claude actives. So yes, the average Hacker News contrarian who thinks their tiny bubble represents the entire world might think that "nobody cares," in part because nobody they know cares, and in part because that assessment aligns with their own personal biases and desires. But anyone who's been paying attention to how internet behemoths grow for the past 30 years certainly still cares about OpenAI.

mellosouls 2y ago
The software behind Facebook as an app wasn't particularly unique, yet it eclipsed the competition. The same could be said for Google. I remember the search engines of the time and Google was a quantum leap. ChatGPT is even more revolutionary but whatever Google is now, once it was brilliant.
- bagacrap 2y ago
  Useful search unlocked the web. I will take that over LLMs in their present state.
- csallen 2y ago
  I agree, just saying, ChatGPT was a quantum leap, too. That's why it has all the consumer mindshare.
- spacemadness 2y ago
  It gets more interesting the older I get seeing people speculate about the now vs. early internet without having lived through the 90s internet. My first response is "do you not remember what that was like?!" then I remember, no, in fact they might not have even been born yet.
lolinder 2y ago
You can't compare Facebook with ChatGPT because the costs per user are in totally different orders of magnitude. One $5/mo VPS can serve the traffic of several hundred thousand Facebook users, while ChatGPT needs an array of GPUs per active user. They can optimize this somewhat, but never as much as Facebook can. This means that they're stuck with more expensive monetization plans to cover their free tier loss leader, hence the $200/mo Pro subscription. And once you're charging that kind of price to try to make ends meet, you're ripe for disruption no matter how good your name recognition.
- bagacrap 2y ago
  Rather than getting into the nitty gritty details of monetization, when we ask ourselves if OpenAi can nail product like Facebook did (I guess) to become the next tech giant, I think we have to ask whether it's even possible when the tech industry is as established as it is. You would think existing megacaps would be all over any new market if there is a profit to be made. Facebook's competition was basically other startups. That said, Google seems to be dropping the ball almost as bad as Yahoo. But sure, if there's absolutely no way to make money from consumer AI then that will also make it hard for oai to win the game.
- csallen 2y ago
  People said similar things about Facebook. "Oh their user growth might be amazing, but they're not making any money, it's not a real business." But it turns out that with enough funding, you can prioritize growth over profit for a very long time. And with enough growth, you can raise unlimited funds before you get to that point. And going this route is smart and effective if you want to get to a $1T valuation in under a decade. So yeah, ChatGPT's margins might not be as high as Facebook's. But it doesn't really matter at this point, they're in growth mode. What matters is whether or not they'll be able to turn their lead and their mindshare into massive profits eventually, and while we can speculate on that, it's far too early to definitively say the answer is no.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Like I said, that doesn't apply when money isn't free, and it doesn't apply when your marginal cost per user is so high.
CPLX 2y ago
> Google didn't even have any real lock-in for years, but it still owned consumer mindshare, which gave it the vast majority of search traffic, which made it one of the most valuable companies in the world. This isn't correct at all. Google's search engine was an important stepping stone to the behavior that actually gave them lock-in, which was an aggressive, anti-competitive and generally illegal effort to monopolize the market for online advertising through acquisitions and boxing out competitors. It really was only possible because for reasons we decided to completely stop enforcing antitrust laws for a decade or two.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  The Microsoft antitrust case also gave them a couple of years to grow without that threat.
player1234 2y ago
400 million use it for free, you can give away 400 million of anything for free. The question is, how many are willing to pay the monthly fee required to stop OpenAI from bleeding 5billion/year and return the promised trillions to investors.
- furyofantares 2y ago
  You absolutely can't give away 400 of anything for free. Have you ever tried?

mellosouls 2y ago

The software behind Facebook as an app wasn't particularly unique, yet it eclipsed the competition. The same could be said for Google. I remember the search engines of the time and Google was a quantum leap. ChatGPT is even more revolutionary but whatever Google is now, once it was brilliant.

bagacrap 2y ago
Useful search unlocked the web. I will take that over LLMs in their present state.
csallen 2y ago
I agree, just saying, ChatGPT was a quantum leap, too. That's why it has all the consumer mindshare.
spacemadness 2y ago
It gets more interesting the older I get seeing people speculate about the now vs. early internet without having lived through the 90s internet. My first response is "do you not remember what that was like?!" then I remember, no, in fact they might not have even been born yet.

lolinder 2y ago

You can't compare Facebook with ChatGPT because the costs per user are in totally different orders of magnitude. One $5/mo VPS can serve the traffic of several hundred thousand Facebook users, while ChatGPT needs an array of GPUs per active user. They can optimize this somewhat, but never as much as Facebook can. This means that they're stuck with more expensive monetization plans to cover their free tier loss leader, hence the $200/mo Pro subscription. And once you're charging that kind of price to try to make ends meet, you're ripe for disruption no matter how good your name recognition.

bagacrap 2y ago
Rather than getting into the nitty gritty details of monetization, when we ask ourselves if OpenAi can nail product like Facebook did (I guess) to become the next tech giant, I think we have to ask whether it's even possible when the tech industry is as established as it is. You would think existing megacaps would be all over any new market if there is a profit to be made. Facebook's competition was basically other startups. That said, Google seems to be dropping the ball almost as bad as Yahoo. But sure, if there's absolutely no way to make money from consumer AI then that will also make it hard for oai to win the game.
csallen 2y ago
People said similar things about Facebook. "Oh their user growth might be amazing, but they're not making any money, it's not a real business." But it turns out that with enough funding, you can prioritize growth over profit for a very long time. And with enough growth, you can raise unlimited funds before you get to that point. And going this route is smart and effective if you want to get to a $1T valuation in under a decade. So yeah, ChatGPT's margins might not be as high as Facebook's. But it doesn't really matter at this point, they're in growth mode. What matters is whether or not they'll be able to turn their lead and their mindshare into massive profits eventually, and while we can speculate on that, it's far too early to definitively say the answer is no.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Like I said, that doesn't apply when money isn't free, and it doesn't apply when your marginal cost per user is so high.

CPLX 2y ago

> Google didn't even have any real lock-in for years, but it still owned consumer mindshare, which gave it the vast majority of search traffic, which made it one of the most valuable companies in the world. This isn't correct at all. Google's search engine was an important stepping stone to the behavior that actually gave them lock-in, which was an aggressive, anti-competitive and generally illegal effort to monopolize the market for online advertising through acquisitions and boxing out competitors. It really was only possible because for reasons we decided to completely stop enforcing antitrust laws for a decade or two.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
The Microsoft antitrust case also gave them a couple of years to grow without that threat.

player1234 2y ago

400 million use it for free, you can give away 400 million of anything for free. The question is, how many are willing to pay the monthly fee required to stop OpenAI from bleeding 5billion/year and return the promised trillions to investors.

furyofantares 2y ago
You absolutely can't give away 400 of anything for free. Have you ever tried?