[scuff3d]

I get your point, but I don't think the pricing is long term viable. We're in the burn everything to the ground to earn market share phase. Once things start to stabilize and there is no more user growth, they'll start putting the screws to the users.

I said the same thing about Netflix in 2015 and Gamepass in 2020. It might have taken a while but eventually it happened. And they're gonna have to raise prices higher and faster at some point.

[Nevermark]

Netflix can't sell you 48 hours of video watching, no matter how many videos they make, or how good they get.

Gamepass, same thing.

Those are completely incomparable businesses.

[jimbokun]

Netflix prices went up a little bit but not very much.

[handoflixue]

Netflix was initially $7/mo in 2007. Currently it goes for $18/mo in 2025.

150% increase in 18 years is about triple the rate of inflation

I'd call that more than "a little bit", but I'd agree that if LLMs go the same way it probably doesn't change the equation much at all.

Plus they do still have an $8/mo ad-supported plan. After adjusting for inflation, that's actually cheaper than the original!

[scuff3d]

I think it's gonna be a lot worse with LLMs. Mainly because they're substantially under charging, I don't think the cost of operating is going to drop much, and the workflows are only going to get more token hungry.

The incentives here are also fucking atrocious. They aren't incentivised to make the model as good as possible. It's in their best interest to tune so it's good enough to not drive you off, but bad enough to push you to spend more.

[brazukadev]

> I think it's gonna be a lot worse with LLMs

It wont: if/when LLMs start to get too expensive, people will just migrate to open models, run it local, etc. I see no scenario where we are held hostage by the main providers.

[simonw]

I was a lot more worried about this when only OpenAI and Anthropic had truly great models - but now we also have Google and five different Chinese AI labs who are releasing open weight models that are in the same ballpark as the OpenAI and Anthropic ones. I think we'll be fine.

[handoflixue]

Very much agreed - right now someone might hold a few months of competitive lead, but open models catch up fast. Plus the lack of any real vendor lock-in means there's just not room for extortionate pricing.