Who is "they"? It makes no sense for Openrouter to allow providers that do not conform to the API. They profit from the commission from the fees and not providing inference.
Yeah, sure, please elaborate on how providers such as Fireworks, DeepInfra, Chutes are going to "make it harder to switch."
I'm talking about openAI, anthropic, Google, etc.
They'll offer consumer and enterprise integrations that will only work with their models.
yes. And they will try both carrots and sticks.
The carrots are already visible - think abstractions like "projects" in ChatGPT.