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Facebook had immense network effects working for it back then. What network effect does OpenAI have? Far as I can tell, moving from OpenAI to Gemini or somethi

Facebook had immense network effects working for it back then. What network effect does OpenAI have? Far as I can tell, moving from OpenAI to Gemini or something else is easy. It’s not sticky at all. There’s no “my friends are primarily using OpenAI so I am too” or anything like that. So again, I ask, what makes it sticky?

jwarden 1y ago
Brand counts for a lot
- fs111 1y ago
  Google is one of the most valuable brands ever. Everyone knows it. It is even used for "searching the web" openai is not that strong of a brand
  - schlch 1y ago
    I think for the general public ChatGPT is a much stronger brand than OpenAI itself.
    - asadotzler 1y ago
      Google is a far bigger brand than ChatGPT and OpenAI combined.
- msabalau 1y ago
  No one has a deep emotional connection with OpenAI that would impede switching. At best they have a bit of cheap tribalism that might prevent some incurious people who don't care much about using the best tools noticing that they aren't.
cshimmin 1y ago
Yep, I mostly interact with these AIs through Cursor. When I want to ask it a question, there's a little dropdown box and I can select openai/anthropic/deepseek whatever model. It's as easy as that to switch.
- bsimpson 1y ago
  Most of my exposure to LLMs has been through GitHub's Copilot, which has that same interface.
- sanderjd 1y ago
  Yeah but I remember when search first started getting integrated with the browser and the "switch search engine" thing was significantly more prominent. Then Google became the default and nobody ever switched it and the rest is history. So the interesting question is: How did that happen? Why wasn't Google search an easily swapped commodity? Or if it was, how did they win and defend their default status? Why didn't the existing juggernauts at the time (Microsoft) beat them at this game? I have my own answers for these, and I'm sure all the smart people figuring out strategy at Open AI have thought about similar things. It's not clear if Open AI will be able to overcome this commodification issue (personally, I think they won't), but I don't think it's impossible, and there is prior art for at least some of the pages in this playbook.
  - reasonableklout 1y ago
    Yes, I think people severely underrate the data flywheel effects that distribution gives an ML-based product, which is what Google was and ChatGPT is. It is also an extremely capital-intensive industry to be in, so even if LLMs are commoditized, it will be to the benefit of a few players, and barring a sustained lead by any one company over the others, I suspect the first mover will be very difficult to unseat. Google is doing well for the moment, but OpenAI just closed a $40 billion round. Neither will be able to rest for a while.
    - sanderjd 1y ago
      Yeah, a very interesting metric to know would be how many tokens of prompt data (that is allowed to be used for training) the different products are seeing per day.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    > So the interesting question is: How did that happen? Why wasn't Google search an easily swapped commodity? Or if it was, how did they win and defend their default status? Why didn't the existing juggernauts at the time (Microsoft) beat them at this game? Maybe the big amount of money they've given to Apple which is their direct competitor in the mobile space. Also good amount of money given to Firefox, which is their direct competitor in the browser space, alongside side Safari from Apple. Most people don't care about the search engine. The default is what they will used unless said default is bad.
rileyphone 1y ago
From talking to people, the average user relies on memories and chat history, which is not easy to migrate. I imagine that's the part of the strategy to keep people from hopping model providers.
- nativeit 1y ago
  That sounds eminently solvable.
- jjani 1y ago
  Google, MS, Apple and Meta are all quite capable of generating such a history for new users, if they'd like to.
miki123211 1y ago
OpenAI (or, more specifically, Chat GPT) is CocaCola, not Facebook. They have the brand recognition and consumer goodwill no other brand in AI has, incredibly so with school students, who will soon go into the professional world and bring that goodwill with them. I think better models are enough to dethrone OpenAI in API, B2C and internal enterprise use cases, but OpenAI has consumer mindshare, and they're going to be the king of chatbots forever. Unless somebody else figures out something which is better by orders of magnitude and that Open AI can't copy quickly, it's going to stay that way. Apple had the opportunity to do something really great here. With Siri's deep device integration on one hand and Apple's willingness to force 3rd-party devs to do the right thing for users on the other, they could have had a compelling product that nobody else could copy, but it seems like they're not willing to go that route, mostly for privacy, antitrust and internal competency reasons, in that order. Google is on the right track and might get something similar (although not as polished as typical Apple) done, but Android's mindshare among tech-savvy consumers isn't great enough for it to get traction.
- pphysch 1y ago
  > who will soon go into the professional world and bring that goodwill with them. ...Until their employer forces them to use Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, or whatever, because that's what they pay for and what integrates into their enterprise stack. And the new employee shrugs and accepts it.
  - miki123211 1y ago
    Just like people are forced to use web Office and Microsoft Teams, and start prefering them over Google Docs and Slack? I don't think so.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Just like people are forced to use web Office and Microsoft Teams, and start prefering them over Google Docs and Slack? I don't think so ...yes. Office is the market leader. Slack has between a fifth and a fourth of the market. Coca-Cola's products have like 70% market share in the American carbonated soft-drink market [1]. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060415/how-much-global-beverage-industry-controlled-coca-cola-and-pepsi.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060415/how-much-glo...

jwarden 1y ago

Brand counts for a lot

fs111 1y ago
Google is one of the most valuable brands ever. Everyone knows it. It is even used for "searching the web" openai is not that strong of a brand
- schlch 1y ago
  I think for the general public ChatGPT is a much stronger brand than OpenAI itself.
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    Google is a far bigger brand than ChatGPT and OpenAI combined.
msabalau 1y ago
No one has a deep emotional connection with OpenAI that would impede switching. At best they have a bit of cheap tribalism that might prevent some incurious people who don't care much about using the best tools noticing that they aren't.

cshimmin 1y ago

Yep, I mostly interact with these AIs through Cursor. When I want to ask it a question, there's a little dropdown box and I can select openai/anthropic/deepseek whatever model. It's as easy as that to switch.

bsimpson 1y ago
Most of my exposure to LLMs has been through GitHub's Copilot, which has that same interface.
sanderjd 1y ago
Yeah but I remember when search first started getting integrated with the browser and the "switch search engine" thing was significantly more prominent. Then Google became the default and nobody ever switched it and the rest is history. So the interesting question is: How did that happen? Why wasn't Google search an easily swapped commodity? Or if it was, how did they win and defend their default status? Why didn't the existing juggernauts at the time (Microsoft) beat them at this game? I have my own answers for these, and I'm sure all the smart people figuring out strategy at Open AI have thought about similar things. It's not clear if Open AI will be able to overcome this commodification issue (personally, I think they won't), but I don't think it's impossible, and there is prior art for at least some of the pages in this playbook.
- reasonableklout 1y ago
  Yes, I think people severely underrate the data flywheel effects that distribution gives an ML-based product, which is what Google was and ChatGPT is. It is also an extremely capital-intensive industry to be in, so even if LLMs are commoditized, it will be to the benefit of a few players, and barring a sustained lead by any one company over the others, I suspect the first mover will be very difficult to unseat. Google is doing well for the moment, but OpenAI just closed a $40 billion round. Neither will be able to rest for a while.
  - sanderjd 1y ago
    Yeah, a very interesting metric to know would be how many tokens of prompt data (that is allowed to be used for training) the different products are seeing per day.
- skydhash 1y ago
  > So the interesting question is: How did that happen? Why wasn't Google search an easily swapped commodity? Or if it was, how did they win and defend their default status? Why didn't the existing juggernauts at the time (Microsoft) beat them at this game? Maybe the big amount of money they've given to Apple which is their direct competitor in the mobile space. Also good amount of money given to Firefox, which is their direct competitor in the browser space, alongside side Safari from Apple. Most people don't care about the search engine. The default is what they will used unless said default is bad.

rileyphone 1y ago

From talking to people, the average user relies on memories and chat history, which is not easy to migrate. I imagine that's the part of the strategy to keep people from hopping model providers.

nativeit 1y ago
That sounds eminently solvable.
jjani 1y ago
Google, MS, Apple and Meta are all quite capable of generating such a history for new users, if they'd like to.

miki123211 1y ago

OpenAI (or, more specifically, Chat GPT) is CocaCola, not Facebook. They have the brand recognition and consumer goodwill no other brand in AI has, incredibly so with school students, who will soon go into the professional world and bring that goodwill with them. I think better models are enough to dethrone OpenAI in API, B2C and internal enterprise use cases, but OpenAI has consumer mindshare, and they're going to be the king of chatbots forever. Unless somebody else figures out something which is better by orders of magnitude and that Open AI can't copy quickly, it's going to stay that way. Apple had the opportunity to do something really great here. With Siri's deep device integration on one hand and Apple's willingness to force 3rd-party devs to do the right thing for users on the other, they could have had a compelling product that nobody else could copy, but it seems like they're not willing to go that route, mostly for privacy, antitrust and internal competency reasons, in that order. Google is on the right track and might get something similar (although not as polished as typical Apple) done, but Android's mindshare among tech-savvy consumers isn't great enough for it to get traction.

pphysch 1y ago
> who will soon go into the professional world and bring that goodwill with them. ...Until their employer forces them to use Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, or whatever, because that's what they pay for and what integrates into their enterprise stack. And the new employee shrugs and accepts it.
- miki123211 1y ago
  Just like people are forced to use web Office and Microsoft Teams, and start prefering them over Google Docs and Slack? I don't think so.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Just like people are forced to use web Office and Microsoft Teams, and start prefering them over Google Docs and Slack? I don't think so ...yes. Office is the market leader. Slack has between a fifth and a fourth of the market. Coca-Cola's products have like 70% market share in the American carbonated soft-drink market [1]. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060415/how-much-global-beverage-industry-controlled-coca-cola-and-pepsi.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060415/how-much-glo...