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Comment by FfejL | Hacker News Reader

"[Microsoft's] platform power didn’t just come from controlling applications on top of Windows, but the OEM ecosystem underneath. If OpenAI builds AI for everyone, then they are positioned to extract margin from companies up-and-down the stack — even Nvidia. "

Ah yes, the ChromeOS strategy. How'd that work out for Google?

Building a platform is good, a way to make quite a bit of money. It's worked really well for Google and Apple on phones (as Ben notes). But there's a reason it didn't happen for Google on PCs. Find it hard to believe it will for OpenAI. They don't (and can not) control the underlying hardware.

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It worked great, Web is ChromeOS Platform for all practical purposes, with Firefox meagre 3%, and Safari only being relevant thanks to iOS, and the whole Electron crap as "native apps".

I don't think that this is true in terms of being able to extract profits from the OEMs underneath, which is what the parent commenter quoted from the article. I don't think this refutes their response as much as it's a different point than the one they were responding to.

Whats more, every single child here in Australia is learning on a school issued Chrome Book. To my kids, a spread sheet is google sheets and a power point is google slides.

(We were joking about it just last week because my partner asked my eldest what was the Power Point he was working on and he said, "Whats Power Point?")

> every single child here in Australia is learning on a school issued Chrome Book

Many? Most? Possibly, but absolutely not every single one.

The counter argument, saying that it’s likely going to be Google, appears in the latest Acquired.fm podcast.

They’re the only AI lab with their own silicon.

Edit: they didn’t say “likely,” they just marveled at the talent + data + TPU + global data centers + not needing external investment.

If I recall correctly, their theory was that google could deliver tokens cheaper than anyone else.

Every single major AI player at the moment is designing chips with some getting close to their first tape out. Including OpenAI.

Amazon.

The question is to what degree that matters - if this power applies anywhere you can access ChatGPT (which is anything with a web browser), do you actually need to control the hardware?

> Ah yes, the ChromeOS strategy. How'd that work out for Google?

They dominate the EDU market?

If OpenAI is only able to dominate a market the size of this, I don't think it's their world that we're all living in

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