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Comment by aurareturn | Hacker News Reader

There is clearly a very strong moat. OpenAI is close to 1 billion active users on ChatGPT while Claude barely have any non-business users. Even though Anthropic had better models at different times this year, I never stopped using ChatGPT and paying for Plus.

We just don't know who will win in which area yet. It doesn't mean there is no moat.

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I don’t think it’s a question of moat. The usage limits on the chat interface with the more advanced Claud models are brutal. I feel like I can barely start a conversation before I get shutdown. However, I switched over to Gemini almost completely and barely ever checkin with ChatGPT these days.

I can't prove it (because they show no stats) but I feel like you get more Gemini Pro with a normal subscription than Opus with a Max plan.

Maybe the new more efficient models made it better for Claude users but that was my experience a couple months ago.

For professional usage though, Calude Code is so much ahead of Antigravity that it didn't even make sense to make a formal comparison. That, even when using the same model (Opus).

OpenAI has close to 1 billion users which are mostly free users and will switch provider the moment OpenAI start charging them or adding ads. Which they will, as OpenAI themselves said they are losing money even with 200$ subs. So that amount of users is pretty meaningless.

Google search is free to use too. So is Instagram. Facebook. Whatsapp. All of these have ads.

OpenAI says they're very profitable on inference.

All of these have ads. And none of these have an equal value alternative. OpenAI, Claude, Deepseek, Mistral, Gemini, are mostly the same to a regular user.

Bing is mostly the same. Kagi is mostly the same. Yahoo, Yandex, etc. It's 2025. Hardly any difference. There were tens of search engines in the 90s and 2000s that were generally mostly the same. Yet, Google still won and owned nearly all search monetization.

Search was even easier to switch. At least ChatGPT has memory.

Most chat apps are the same as Whatsapp. All of them are free too.

"Ask ChaGPT" is the equivalent to "google it" in 2025.

Hah, no, not by far. Bing, Yahoo, Yandex are way worse than Google. Saying anything different is delusional.

The comparison with WhatsApp feels like trolling. WhatsApp has a network effect...

No those are all significantly worse products, or at least were for a long time. I don't think OpenAI has anything close to a moat. They don't even have a short fence.

> OpenAI says they're very profitable on inference.

Great, but they need to burn billions on advertising, freemeium, and mostly R&D for new models.

So do all their competitors.

Google and Microsoft have immense money printing machines. They can lose many billions of dollars for years and be fine as a business. OpenAI, not so much.

Sure OpenAI can. They are the most well funded private company in history. Everyone wants to invest in them.

Meanwhile, Google and Microsoft are public companies and their stock can drop and their shareholders can force them to exit.

I did, moved off to Claude in 2024 and many others around me did the same. Do you have data for non-business claim besides anecdotal evidence?

Yes.

Claude has 1% based on this: https://gs.statcounter.com/ai-chatbot-market-share

Consumers overwhelmingly use ChatGPT over Claude. ChatGPT dominance has not wavered.

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