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Comment by samdjstephens | Hacker News Reader

> The broad consumer reach of ChatGPT creates a powerful distribution channel into the workplace

They mention this line in different forms a couple of times in the article. It’s clear they’re pretty rattled about Anthropic’s momentum in enterprise, I wonder how confident they really are in this rationale.

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It's an interesting strategy, I see a pretty big risk from them leaning into it like this. We already have a vibe in my circles of the old "gmail vs yahoo" type thing where if you saw someone had a yahoo mail address you assumed they were technologically illiterate. Similarly it's mildly embarrassing already to say you used ChatGPT for something. It's not unrecoverable, but it's a pretty steep slippery slope they probably don't want to be anywhere near if they care about enterprise.

After the DoD moves? It is not just the technologically illiterate, it is part of the US culture war. OpenAI is the MAGA brand, like tesla.

What an absurd leap. OpenAI is the maga brand because they simp for government contracts like any massive company would?

Did you miss the cancel/unsubscribe gpt boycott? It was only about a month ago. Many people I know cancelled/unsubscribed. To be fair though, most people I have talked with needed almost no encouragement to move to anthropic or google (better products, easy to switch etc). Consumer sentiment can change quickly.

Many people in your bubble cancelled.

Perhaps, but it was pretty widely reported on, if you care to look.

Caitlin Kalinowski and other OpenAI employees resigned because of it [1].

ChatGPT uninstalls rose by 295%, downloads fell 13% on day one and a further 5% the next day [2].

One-star reviews spiked 775% overnight, then doubled again the following day [2].

1.5 million users joined the QuitGPT boycott within days [1].

Claude rose to #1 most downloaded app in the App Store and US usage rose by 51% [2].

New customers are now choosing Claude over OpenAI 70% of the time [1].

And much more. I think it was just your bubble that didn’t cancel it.

[1] https://letsdatascience.com/blog/altman-called-the-pentagon-...

[2] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/openai-backlash-pentagon-partnersh...

I'm aware that it happened. You seem under the impression that this is some kind of mass exodus based on people you know.

Uninstalls up 300%! What's the baseline?

> downloads fell 13% on day one and a further 5% the next day

Dramatic falloff of new downloads after one day (still plenty of new downloads). Day 3 was likely negligible and, I bet, it was back to normal less than a week after when the story left the news cycle.

> 1.5 million users joined the QuitGPT boycott within days

That's both very few people and a completely meaningless number since all it requires is checking a box. Did anyone verify they were actually human?

> Claude rose to #1 most downloaded app in the App Store and US usage rose by 51% [2].

> New customers are now choosing Claude over OpenAI 70% of the time [1].

Which has nothing to do with cancellations.

> And much more. I think it was just your bubble that didn’t cancel it.

Most people in my bubble have no idea any of this happened and are just using free chatgpt tier if they use it at all. That seems much more representative given your provided statistics of the 1.5m person boycott.

Ahh I see, you possess the superior bubble, how silly of me!

I didn't say that, I just brought that up to contrast it to yours.

The strongest part of my argument goes with your cited 1.5m number. That's not a lot of people, especially when you consider the signing of a petition requires no other action than signing and has no way to verify the signing.

I'm just not seeing how any of this harmed OpenAI more than a government contract helps.

Like Anthropic notably refused to.

I don't know if it's guaranteed to work, but the strategy is real. I know Notion won vs. competitors in the space because they focused on consumer first, and consumers then brought Notion into their workplaces.

I am amused that you think IT is going to respond to an unmanaged LLM tool that operates outside of the LLM policies all serious enterprises have set up by now and say 'wow, that is cool and maybe we should buy in to this!'

What is going to happen is that the emplyee who tries to sneak OpenAI into our org is going to have two meetings set up by the end of the day, one with IT to ensure the whatever tool they installed is burned out with fire and one with HR to ensure they know the company policy and acknowledge that another fuck-up like this is a firing offense.

What if that employee is in the C-suite?

Then the business was already screwed and this makes little difference?

Isn't that exactly how the iPhone won though? As another commenter said, once the cool gadget becomes a must have for executives, IT will be told to find a way to make it work.

I don't read that as "rattled" so much as leaning into the one thing they clearly have that Anthropic doesn't: massive consumer distribution

Kind of makes me wonder how 'accelerated' the timeline of publishing this article was based upon the Claude Code leak today. Considering everyone has gotten a sneak peek at what Anthropic is working on OpenAI might be a little worried. This could also just be coincidence, but this piece really does read like self-encouraging fluff.

The timing of this coming out today is cause today is the last day of the month/quarter and has nothing to do with Claude.

Ah, yeah that makes way more sense, I always forget about financial quarter timings.

0. These things take an enormous amount of time and coordinating to release.

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