How are ~1B active users not "moat"? Might have to pull out the "Haters gonna hate" like it's 2007
I think the even better analogy than browsers is search engines. There aren't any network effects or platform lock-in, but there is potential for a data flywheel, building a brand, and just getting users in the habit of using you. The results won't necessarily turn out the same - I think OpenAI's edge on results quality is a lot less than early Google over its competitors - but the shape of the competition is similar.
There is no moat
On iOS with the Apple agreement, and on Android (though the question of hardware remains when considering beyond Pixel phones).
Now all search engines suck and google's sucks just as bad or worse than the rest.
If someone were to follow the original google playbook and make a search engine that helped people find things (eg by respecting the query syntax rather than making 'helpful' suggestions and dropping words the user included in their query) and kept the ads separate and out of the way of results. They might well make a monster. But this is old tech so nobody cares and everyone thinks google is unassailble even while nobody likes them anymore. Is there /any/ money in search? I thought so but I must be wrong for it to get this bad.
https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-chatgpt-vs-gemini-web...
"What's you number one piece of hiring advice?"
"Hire for slope, not Y-intercept. This is actually my number one piece of life advice."
-@sama, who I’m generally a big fan of. But the job is now harder
About 5% according to a news article a few months ago.
Will the other 95% stick around once ads or payments are required?
If market share is a moat, IBM should still be the biggest tech company.
If it’s not the quality of their answers ?
Then it can be something along the lines of "subscribe to Google XXX or Apple +++ and have 'unlimited' cloud requests"
> This plan may include ads. Learn more
> When will ads be available in ChatGPT?
We’re beginning in the US on February 9, 2026
> Starting in February, if ads personalization is turned on, ads will be personalized based on your chats and any context ChatGPT uses to respond to you. If memory is on, ChatGPT may save and use memories and reference recent chats when selecting an ad.
When they cost more to serve than they bring in, customer switching cost is vanishingly low, your competitor has revenue from other things and you don't.
What? "Other things"? This is really vague. Who says competitors have lower CAC? It's rather likely competitors pay more for a new customer, due to, very simply, brand.
They aren’t going to run out of money. They have existing customer relationships. They invented the model architecture of which GPT is a variant. Their existing enormous business is their own AI customer.
OpenAI’s business seems way more precarious than Google. Users get the tech either way.
Google worked as a free service because their backend was cheap. AI models lack that same benefit. The business model seems to be missing a step 2.
Claude has impressive mindshare in many engineering disciplines too, and given how many open source projects are a play on its name I’m not sure I’d argue it isn’t catchy either. Certainly rolls off the tongue easier for me than “chatGPT” does, which even Sam Altman their CEO agrees is an awful product name they are stuck with.
It's much more important to look at "paid." Only up to 50M (est.) are paid with a substantial chunk (10M) as enterprise/edu/promotional paid accounts.