[no_wizard]

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?

[miki123211]

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.

[aylmao]

> 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.

This will happen, and it won't be another model which Open AI can't copy, it'll be products.

I don't doubt OpenA I can create the better models but they're no moat if they're not in better products. Right now the main product is chat, which is easy enough to build, but as integrations get deeper how can OpenAI actually ensure it keeps traffic?

Case in point, Siri. Apple allows you to use ChatGPT with Siri right now. If Apple chooses so, they could easily remove that setting. On most devices ChatGPT lives within the confines of an app or the browser. A phone with deep AI integration is arguably a fantastic product— much better than having to open an app and chat with a model. How quickly could Open AI build a phone that's as good as those of the big phone companies today?

To draw a parallel— Google Assistant has long been better than Siri, but to use Siri you don't have to install an app. I've used both Android and iOS, and every time I'm on iPhone I switch back to Siri because in spite of being a worse assistant, it's overall a better product. It integrates well with the rest of the phone, because Apple has chosen to not allow any other voice assistant integrate deeply with the rest of the phone.

[LMYahooTFY]

Does Google not have brand recognition and Consumer good will? We might read all sorts of deep opinions of Google on HN, but I think Search and Chrome market share speak themselves. For the average consumer, I'm skeptical that OpenAI carries much weight.

[throwup238]

> For the average consumer, I'm skeptical that OpenAI carries much weight.

My friend teaches at a Catholic girls’ high school and based on what he tells me, everyone knows about ChatGPT, both staff and students. He just had to fail an entire class on an assignment because they all used it to write a book summary (which many of them royally screwed up because there’s another book with a nearly identical title).

It’s all anecdotal and whatnot but I don’t think many of them even know about Claude or Gemini, while ChatGPT has broad adoption within education. (I’m far less clear on how much mindshare it has within the general population though)

[pphysch]

> 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]

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]

> 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-glo...

[_Algernon_]

Coca Cola does insane amounts of advertising to maintain their position in the mind of the consumer. I don't think it is as sticky as you say it is for OpenAi

[cshimmin]

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]

Most of my exposure to LLMs has been through GitHub's Copilot, which has that same interface.

[sanderjd]

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]

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]

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]

> 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.

[sanderjd]

I don't think my comment implied that the answers to these questions aren't knowable! And indeed, I agree that the deals to pay for default status in different channels is a big part of that answer.

So then apply that to Open AI. What are the distribution channels? Should they be paying Cursor to make them the default model? Or who else? Would that work? If not, why not? What's different?

My intuition is that this wouldn't work for them. I think if this "pay to be default" strategy works for someone, it will be one of their deeper pocketed rivals.

But I also don't think this was the only reason Google won search. In my memory, those deals to pay to be the default came fairly long after they had successfully built the brand image as the best search engine. That's how they had the cash to afford to pay for this.

A couple years ago, I thought it seemed likely that Open AI would win the market in that way, by being known as the clear best model. But that seems pretty unclear now! There are a few different models that are pretty similarly capable at this point.

Essentially, I think the reason Google was able to win search whereas the prospects look less obvious for Open AI is that they just have stronger competition!

To me, it just highlights the extent to which the big players at the time of Google's rise - Microsoft, Yahoo, ... Oracle maybe? - really dropped the ball on putting up strong competition. (Or conversely, Google was just further ahead of its time.)

[rileyphone]

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.

[jjani]

Google, MS, Apple and Meta are all quite capable of generating such a history for new users, if they'd like to.

[nativeit]

That sounds eminently solvable.

[jwarden]

Brand counts for a lot

[fs111]

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]

I think for the general public ChatGPT is a much stronger brand than OpenAI itself.

[asadotzler]

Google is a far bigger brand than ChatGPT and OpenAI combined.

[msabalau]

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.