2/26/2026 at 3:33:44 AM
Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue.My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable that it would be hard to get majority of these free users to pay for anything, and hence, advertising seems a good bet. You couldn't have thought of a more contextual way of plugging in a paid product.
I think OpenAI has better chance to winning on the consumer side than everyone else. Of course, would that much up against hundreds of billions of dollars in capex remains to be seen.
by shubhamjain
2/26/2026 at 2:03:44 PM
So in summary OpenAI are basing their valuation of 285 billion on the moat of 'users won't be arsed to download a different app'???Seems optimistic when there is very little intrinsic stickness due to learning the UI or network effects. Perhaps a little bit chat history - but not 285 billions worth.
Also completely ignoring the fact that most devices things will start to come with the same features directly built into the device/app - and the largest market will be as a commodity backend api that the eventually users won't know or care if it's a google or openai model.
As I see it, they need to be doing stuff nobody else can ( in either price or performance ), otherwise it's hard to justify the valuation.
by DrScientist
2/26/2026 at 2:06:08 PM
It have worked for Google for years, and that was without even the barrier of download in app, just going to a different URL.by graemep
2/26/2026 at 2:22:26 PM
Don’t you think that’s because Google was objectively a head above everyone other search engine for a long time?by b3kart
2/26/2026 at 2:28:20 PM
It’s not anymore (actually google is awful now) and people are still using itby azan_
2/26/2026 at 2:45:03 PM
As Chrome has about 75% market share across all platforms - probably 90% of those use the google default.As far as I'm aware OpenAI doesn't control any defaults for which AIChat service to use.
by DrScientist
2/26/2026 at 3:38:46 PM
It took Google a decade before they released Chrome so OpenAI has plenty of time to have a Chrome moment. Maybe it'll be something that comes from the OpenClaw acqui-hires?by 111111101101
2/26/2026 at 4:41:32 PM
During that time - as was pointed out elsewhere - Google search was simply way better than the alternatives - embarrassingly so. It also paid the Mozilla foundation lots of money to be the default.by DrScientist
2/26/2026 at 9:01:06 PM
Google wasn't bleeding money like crazy at the time. Google was operating in a post-hype cycle. We are most likely somewhere in an epsilon around the peak of the AI hype and OpenAI is more comparable to AOL or Yahoo. One striking similarity is the inability to innovate themselves, instead relying on copying others or acquiring.The OpenClaw guy is surely a decent product person, but OpenClaw did not innovate in any real sense. He was just pushing an existing idea to the limit without any concern for quality or security. It had its hype moment, it inspired a bunch of people, and might find its own niche, but it is a flavor of the week kind of thing. I've been getting a lot more cold-calls by non-technical people in the last few weeks thanks to it. Congratulations, the quality threshold that justifies my response rose in equal measure. Nothing was gained, just a lot of tokens spent.
by arw0n
2/26/2026 at 9:12:10 PM
Um. Google has already integrated Gemini into Chrome. I'm not sure what you mean by "OpenAI has plenty of time to have a Chrome moment". If you're just referring to the browser wars, the original wars were fought (furiously) between Microsoft, Mozilla, (and to a lesser extent Apple). Microsoft thought they had won, and then Chrome came out.by danesparza
2/26/2026 at 2:57:23 PM
Copilot?by logical_proof
2/26/2026 at 9:03:46 PM
> It’s not anymore (actually google is awful now) and people are still using itif people are still using it, then it's really one of the few things, right?
* you are wrong and it's not awful
* it _is_ awful but good enough for normal people to never care about alternatives, which are anyway not even very easy to find given the absolute stranglehold google has on that slice
either way not quite the same as choice of llms today.
by twelve40
2/26/2026 at 10:19:10 PM
Yeah but the only alternative that's actually better is paid. Google is still best ad supported search engine out there. There's no one obvious to turn to or recommend.The best free alternative to Google right is ironically $preferred_llm_provider and ChatGPT is the obvious uncapped free option. I think free will end up being OpenAI's most if they manage to make it profitable.
by Spivak
2/26/2026 at 7:32:34 PM
I've been feeling the pain of google being awful for a while now. Do you have a different search engine you would recommend?by matthewkayin
2/26/2026 at 7:36:31 PM
I used Kagi for several months, I guess I'd at least recommend trying it out.I stopped using it, though, and I can't honestly say I've missed it. It was nice not having sponsored results, I guess, but overall it didn't feel like a transformative experience.
by rkomorn
2/26/2026 at 9:21:17 PM
All of googles products are unique in some way and have genuine moats. The search engine was the best. The ecosystem was there and pretty good. Docs had online collaboration. And on and on.by array_key_first
2/26/2026 at 2:18:52 PM
Google was clearly superior fo a long time. They got close to 90% before enshitification started in earnest. We are not at that stage yet with AI chatbots.Also, Google benefited from being the default on mainstream OSes. When people have to download an application, getting one or the other does not take more effort. Yes, OpenAI being tightly integrated within Windows, Android, and iOS would be a moat. That’s not the case and it is unlikely to happen. Google will go with their own and Apple won’t put itself in a situation where they are reliant on a single company, they got burned enough times.
by kergonath
2/26/2026 at 2:21:15 PM
Exactly - it was better for a long time.Also which search engine was the default was a massive factor - that's why Google paid for that.
If Google hadn't controlled Chrome, and or paid for defaults - they could have pretty much lost all their traffic overnight - ( if they weren't better ).
by DrScientist
2/26/2026 at 6:00:48 PM
> the moat of 'users won't be arsed to download a different app'???don't even need to download anything, just open your browser and go to google.com to use gemini
last week-end, I've seen a non-tech friend who previously used chatGPT on his phone, just go on google to ask stuff to the AI (they have no idea it's gemini and it doesn't matter)
if you are not looking for having some kind of relationship with an AI (from what I understand people use chatGPT for this use case), but just looking for an AI to search stuff, then in my opinion you can't beat google search + gemini summary all at once for free with a single prompt
by ggregoire
2/26/2026 at 7:40:42 PM
Directing your attention to Coca-Colaby singleshot_
2/26/2026 at 5:30:31 PM
You'd be surprised that most people don't find any pleasure in comparing and trying out different software. They're looking for something which works and ChatGPT is just an amazing product. People aren't going to look for something else unless it breaks for some reason.Most people who have a vehicle aren't trying out different motor oils, or comparing every month if they should change model, etc.
> As I see it, they need to be doing stuff nobody else can ( in either price or performance ), otherwise it's hard to justify the valuation.
Do you have a car? What does it do that no other car does?
by carlosjobim
2/26/2026 at 2:33:04 PM
[flagged]by adithyassekhar
2/26/2026 at 4:00:49 PM
Easy for me to download a different app. Not easy for me to get everyone I communicate with to download a different app.I don't see the laziness lock in working nearly as effectively for something outside of messaging.
by wlesieutre
2/26/2026 at 4:47:35 PM
Coca Cola would like to have a word with you.These models respond differently and have their own "personality". Even in coding, there are people who swear by one model over the other. I know engineers who just stick with Claude and could not care to try Codex. For them, if it's not broken, why fix it?
by nouveaux
2/26/2026 at 5:15:53 PM
> Even in coding, there are people who swear by one model over the otherI just swear at the models. =P But jokes aside, I liked Claude Code and found it a big productivity boost for a month or two. Then the honeymoon phase slowly ended and I realized how much of its code I was rewriting myself. I don't use assistants anymore except to summarize changes for commit messages or PRs (and then I rewrite those summaries).
by nozzlegear
2/26/2026 at 5:07:19 PM
Not sure how many developers are like me, but I am very open to Claude, very open to Gemini, open to open source models (including gpt-oss), but am very reluctant to use frontier OpenAI models. The Microsoft distrust runs extremely deep, the browser authentication dance demanded of users for ChatGPT was the most extreme of the major frontier models, and early OpenAI API service stability was absolutely terrible. Llama had my back back then.by waffletower
2/26/2026 at 7:33:33 PM
This is is no way dismissing your concern but I think this reinforces my point about branding. Whether or not Microsoft is handling AI in a responsible way, we don't trust them due to their poor practices on Window.by nouveaux
2/26/2026 at 5:59:12 PM
Apple is a two sided market between developers and users. OpenAI has not succeeded in building this so far.by louiereederson
2/26/2026 at 3:22:35 PM
When unstructured human language is the bulk of your interface, it takes effort to contrive any vendor lock-in that doesn't approach zero.The same doesn't go for traditional, structured software ecosystems, which can afford to coast for a lot longer.
by niam
2/26/2026 at 2:40:44 PM
Sorry - being dim - I don't get that.by DrScientist
2/26/2026 at 3:03:07 PM
Apple has offered products with little value over competitors for a long time now, but they still get to command a large premium on their products because "the vibes are right".When engineers analyze things they look at the specs, stats, and metrics. When consumers analyze things they look at what others are doing, feel for vibes, roll into the convenience, and stick with the familiar.
by WarmWash
2/26/2026 at 3:11:02 PM
> Apple has offered products with little value over competitorsI'm genuinely surprised by this comment.
For example, I thought there was universal sentiment that apple silicon / M-series computers are pretty unmatched.
by jasonjmcghee
2/26/2026 at 7:10:44 PM
> For example, I thought there was universal sentiment that apple silicon / M-series computers are pretty unmatched.5 years ago, sure, but the x86 world has come a long way since Apple dumped Intel. I'd certainly take a 2026 Intel machine over something with an M1-M3.
by ac29
2/26/2026 at 3:19:16 PM
The overwhelming volume of Apples sales comes from people who wouldn't notice if their device was running 2016 level hardware.by WarmWash
2/26/2026 at 3:30:55 PM
If software didn't keep getting worse this might be true but the average consumer notices if their computer is slow or dies too quickly.by jasonjmcghee
2/26/2026 at 3:34:54 PM
It's sad how hardware improves leaps every year but software still does the same things but slower.by adithyassekhar
2/26/2026 at 4:01:37 PM
But competitors do the sameby kelvinjps10
2/26/2026 at 5:20:45 PM
> The overwhelming volume of Apples sales comes from people who wouldn't notice if their device was running 2016 level hardware.How could we possibly know this? This is just an argument from elitism, as though the plebes should be happy playing Farmville on their gateway computers, while us haughty developers sit in our ivory towers and herald in the end of the anthropocene using machines we can actually appreciate.
by nozzlegear
2/26/2026 at 6:01:14 PM
> How could we possibly know this?They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding.
Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. The desktop market share isn't going up, the Mac's lifeline is depreciation of old hardware to force Mac owners into the upgrade cycle: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
by bigyabai
2/26/2026 at 6:21:45 PM
> They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding.It's not a good point, it's an assumption based on elitism, just like your assumption that nobody is doing anything other than Snapchat or Instagram on their phones, or that they're only buying an iPhone because of the branding and not also the performance and battery life. In your head, what do you think the average iPhone user looks like? Are they drooling simpletons?
> Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. You look at the desktop market share in 2026 and it's very apparent that the Mac's regular upgrade cycle is driving Apple's sales, not direct competition: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
What point are you trying to make here? People like the iPhone, the iPhone makes a shitload of money, so therefore people who have Macs don't appreciate the hardware? Or what?
Also, StatCounter is not an accurate website:
https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/ios_26_adoption_rate_is_n...
https://daringfireball.net/2026/02/apple_releases_ios_26_ado...
by nozzlegear
2/26/2026 at 6:36:34 PM
Almost nobody is doing anything other than Snapchat or Instagram on their iPhones. That's the point, "the overwhelming volume of Apple sales" was the original claim and they're absolutely right. Compare every single Apple product on volume and you will not approach the volume of iPhones being sold. Even cult-classic product lines like the Mac cannot hold a candle in comparison to Airpods sales volume.If the iPhone was a branded Android device, then sure, maybe this would be an elitist argument. But the iPhone is a proprietary platform with a locked-down browser, locked-down store, locked-down GPU drivers and OTA updates that decide how long your battery lasts. It is not elitist to point out that Apple customers by-and-large ignore these facts, it's the objective circumstances of the smartphone market.
by bigyabai
2/26/2026 at 6:18:09 PM
iPhones are some sci-fi magic computers. It's incredible how powerful they are.Most smartphones are.
by jasonjmcghee
2/26/2026 at 6:27:54 PM
Be that as it may, I can guarantee you with complete confidence that 90% of iPhone owners are not engaged in heavy workloads.The overwhelming majority of people just don't notice.
by bigyabai
2/26/2026 at 3:22:43 PM
I think the point was supposed to be default apps in an OS, similar to default search engine.. What I am missing is that OpenAI is in no way that default. Every OS, browser, etc should be able to find a more profitable default than sending someone to OpenAI.by hojiyaka
2/26/2026 at 3:34:13 PM
Apple is one of the very few companies committed to (hardware) quality. They make sure their entry level models are very decent. You can't buy a apple product that is complete shite.Yes, the software side is getting worse in recent years but is it at least slightly better than the competition for average consumers.
Plus being a tech monopolist they can offer a whole ecosystem of software and hardware that works great with each other. So the value proposition is greater than the sum of its parts.
That is the problem with OpenAI, they have only one thing. Google can bleed money all day long and they don't need to care because they have other profitable business ventures.
The way to make money with LLMs is to either be technically superior which only works short term until the competition catches up or create a monopoly. The second option is dead in the water with the advent of the Chinese models. I guess they can lobby to have them banned and create a cartel with their other US based competitors. Otherwise they are screwed. That is why they are allowing military use of their model now. They need that sweet government money to survive. Also they keep talking about AGI so the government gets scared about the Chinese reaching it first and supports them. Complete scam.
by cardanome
2/26/2026 at 3:14:01 PM
it's a very different world when you switch from an iphone to an android phone or vice versa. However, Claude.ai and chatgpt.com are not very different at all. If one has ads and the other does not, it's easy to switch.by chasd00
2/26/2026 at 3:41:17 PM
>> Apple has offered products with little value over competitorsMy Pixel dropped connections unexpectedly. The battery would barely last till end of day.
Apple hardware is simply better value for the money
by manishsharan
2/26/2026 at 3:26:50 PM
There's this thing called power of defaults.If a setting is default, if an app is presented on the front they'll continue to use it as it is. The crowd here always overestimates how competent/interested the general public are in these things.
99.9% (source: my life) of users never even open the second level of the settings app. 99% don't even open the settings app. They don't know how much they can even change or care.
iPhones auto surfacing airpods to pair with was not for convenience it was a necessity. People don't know how to pair with bluetooth. Now android does it as well.
There's a generation that grew up with appliances that accounted for their mistakes rather than failing. There's no need to learn or understand how something works.
by adithyassekhar
2/26/2026 at 4:54:06 PM
Sure defaults are extremely powerful - but that's rather my point - where is the default that OpenAI controls?Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft ( and various Chinese companies ) etc are largely are in control of defaults - via devices and browsers.
Perhaps in Github copilot ( via MS ) - but software developers are not typical consumers.
Perhaps Sam and johnnies new assistant thing will transform the market - but until that ships it's vapour ware.
by DrScientist
2/26/2026 at 5:00:51 PM
Yes this was not relevant to the main topic of openai. I'm just responding to the statement made by the parent comment.by adithyassekhar
2/26/2026 at 2:38:23 PM
You’re comparing a single app with an entire ecosystem and app marketplace. Poor comparison.by fatata123
2/26/2026 at 5:13:42 AM
I think you're right about stickyness up to a point.Cultural defaults seem unchangeable but then suddenly everyone knows, that's everyone knows, that OpenAI is passé.
OpenAI has a real chance to blow their lead, ending up in a hellish no-man's land by trying to please everyone: Not cool enough for normies, not safe enough for business, not radical enough for techies. Pick a lane or perish.
Not owning their own infrastructure, and being propped up by financial / valuation tricks are more red flags.
Being a first mover doesn't guarantee getting to the golden goose, remember MySpace.
by OscarTheGrinch
2/26/2026 at 5:45:41 AM
> Being a first mover doesn't guarantee getting to the golden goose, remember MySpace.MySpace, ICQ, Altavista, Dropbox, Yahoo, BlackBerry, Xerox Alto, Altair 8800, CP/M, WordStar, VisiCalc, the list is very long.
by oblio
2/26/2026 at 9:27:23 AM
Hotmail is a good example too. I remember it being pretty ubiquitous, at least for the 'personal email' crowd, and it seemed implausible that people would give up on what was often their main email 'location' for another offering without being able to transfer their often important and personal stuff. then gmail came along.by mercer
2/26/2026 at 12:25:06 PM
The internet and the surrounding context changed so fast that it made little sense to cling to old email addresses made in the old context. Gmail represented the 'new internet' and old patterns became obsolete (less subversive, more mainstream/corporate). When there's a seismic shift in usage patterns that's when all bets are off regarding where everyone lands. Being the first mover means little here. If the way people interacted with AI underwent a massive shift, OpenAI would likely get left behind. The only safe bet is to invent your own killer.by hackinthebochs
2/26/2026 at 5:27:14 PM
Younger people might not realize or remember this, but when GMail came out it was HUGE. Like, I remember it was invite-only for a while and getting an invite was a really big deal. In retrospect that was some genius marketing by them (also just a way better product, at the time)Also switching email was a lot easier back then. Nowadays if you're using gmail as an auth provider it's very hard to completely abandon an inbox without a lot of friction. Back then all your logins were separate anyway.
by overgard
2/26/2026 at 11:11:36 AM
Beyond that too, I would think that many people view a Hotmail account as an indicator that you're backwards or not serious in business.I distinctly remember the shift to and then away from Altavista as well.
by prawn
2/26/2026 at 10:01:06 AM
Interesting point. I guess people liked the convenience of unlimited storage even more than they liked the convenience of keeping the same email address. In a way they traded one convenience for another.by FartyMcFarter
2/26/2026 at 10:34:46 AM
Did Hotmail offer email redirection at that time? I can't remember whether that sort of thing that would make it easy to switch away was offered.by mister_mort
2/26/2026 at 11:09:58 AM
I don't remember that detail, but I do remember most people not treating their inbox as an archive at the time. So there was less friction to switch to gmail, and more reason to do so due to the "real time" ticking storage amount of gmail, which then became an archive (again for most people).by croon
2/26/2026 at 2:46:08 PM
> I do remember most people not treating their inbox as an archive at the time.Indeed. For me, the step was gmail. With its humongous 1GB of storage, that was the moment when I stopped having to delete stuff to save space. It’s funny because a lot of people I know who were already older at that point kept the habit of deleting emails, even today.
by kergonath
2/26/2026 at 6:46:33 AM
VisiCalc, CP/M, BlackBerry and Yahoo definitely got a golden goose; it's long after establishing their dominance that they failed at maintaining it.by shakow
2/26/2026 at 9:15:42 AM
Isn’t that exactly what’s being discussed re: OpenAI? They seemed unstoppable a few years ago, but have lost quite a bit of reputation and their position of technical lead.by stingraycharles
2/26/2026 at 9:22:11 AM
What I mean is that the one I cited were first movers that actually found a golden goose, then got ousted years/decades later for various reasons.For now at least, OpenAI has not found a golden goose (i.e. made a lot of money) yet.
by shakow
2/26/2026 at 9:26:13 AM
> have lost quite a bit of reputationin the tech world, maybe. All my 'normie' friends are using ChatGPT though and have no concept of their reputation, nor intention of switching. Most people I know are hardly even aware of alternatives, even of Gemini, though everyone has a Google account.
I personally also use ChatGPT and have zero reason not to, currently. I might switch if they royally mess up, but everything they've messed up has been fixed within a day.
by wickedsight
2/26/2026 at 11:31:43 AM
But would they pay for it? That's the difference.by XorNot
2/26/2026 at 1:37:26 PM
More people pay for ChatGPT than any other Consumer AI service by far, and when ads rollout, it won't matter that much.by famouswaffles
2/26/2026 at 1:04:44 PM
IBM owned literally the whole market on computers at a time when computing equipment was prohibitively expensive and centralised.by Lorkki
2/26/2026 at 1:55:23 PM
IBM was a special case, I'm not sure there were many markets so thoroughly cornered like IT was for about 3 decades. I guess telephone (AT&T) was similar.by oblio
2/26/2026 at 1:08:42 PM
> the list is very longTesla is lurking as well
by nixass
2/26/2026 at 2:58:29 PM
I guess it depends on what you mean by golden goose. MySpace sold for an insane amount of money at the time and it was basically one guy, “Tom”.by chasd00
2/26/2026 at 6:26:08 AM
Pick a lane or perish.Literally every industry has examples of businesses that don't excel at anything and still do well enough to carry on. In fact, in most industries, it's actually hard to see any business that's clearly leading on any specific front because as soon as it becomes an obvious factor in gaining market share the competing businesses focus on that area as well.
by onion2k
2/26/2026 at 7:32:16 AM
Yeah. Vauxhall/Opel has always been my go-to example here. Their cars excel at nothing. They’re not especially stylish. Not the fastest or nicest to drive. Not unusually efficient. Not particularly reliable or guaranteed for a long period. By no means the cheapest. They don’t even achieve a sweet spot of averageness across all these things. Yet people have somehow carried on buying them over decades.by gmac
2/26/2026 at 9:49:28 AM
Jeremey Clarkson called the Astra "the most boring car ever made". I loved both of mine - they always got me and my stuff where I needed to be, and were easy to fix.The last one, a 2007 model that has now moved on to my younger sibling, might be the last "simple" car.
by nDRDY
2/26/2026 at 6:02:50 AM
First mover advantage: marketing logic or marketing legend: https://gtellis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/pioneering-ad...by brookst
2/26/2026 at 6:33:36 PM
"Near billion users", yet less than 5% pay them a single penny[1]. Like you said, the vast majority of these will never pay anything, but I'd argue the majority will migrate to the "next" free provider as soon as OpenAI starts inserting too many ads into the product.I watched my partner switch from OAI to DeepSeek during the last outage and she hasn't been back to OAI since. I am skeptical there is any actual stickyness when basically all of the chatbots do the same thing for the casual user.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/15/openais_chatgpt_popul...
by parliament32
2/26/2026 at 7:09:17 PM
Google Search has no stickiness and they managed to build a behemoth.ChatGPT is a great product, but the lack of stickiness comes into play because there are many viable alternatives.
They’re all going to have to monetise the consumer segment at some stage, and I think that’s likely to be via ads on a freemium tier in most instances.
by nfm
2/26/2026 at 9:53:01 PM
Google Search used to be awesome, heads, shoulders, belt buckle and knees above everyone else.Seriously, I still remember the moment I first used Google. I was using Altavista / OpenText and Yahoo now and then. I thought Altavista was the best and OpenText was for geeking out. Once I tried Google I never looked back for decades. Their tech was their moat.
by dh2022
2/26/2026 at 9:11:44 PM
Google Search was head & shoulders better than the alternatives back when Google was developing into the behemoth it is today.Google search still has a ton of stickiness for the casual user.
by judahmeek
2/26/2026 at 7:11:18 PM
You say 5% of users pay like it’s a shockingly bad number, but that’s almost exactly the same as YouTube’s paid subscribers (125m) vs MAUs (2.5b).Like it or not, OpenAI is building a real business. It’s obviously capital intensive, but we will see how it goes.
And no, the vast majority will not migrate. Just like the vast majority didn’t migrate away from Google after they launched ads.
I don’t get the HN urge to be the contrarian saying “that’ll never work.”
by Esophagus4
2/26/2026 at 7:52:28 PM
OpenAI is sitting on top of a $100+ billion ad revenue business just waiting to happen. Those 95% of users not paying anything are about to start paying something.by adventured
2/26/2026 at 8:29:28 PM
They can't afford to wait.OpenAI every day is closer and closer to collapse, they urgently need an IPO to pass the hot potato to someone else.
They have 35B USD in the bank.
They did 13B USD in revenue in 2025, and in 2026 they plan to spend 55B USD.
They are already dead if they don't find new people to lend them money.
One of the solution is to sell the company to fools (the general public / IPO), so founders and investors can get away with it and, buy a bit of runway for the company.
by rvnx
2/26/2026 at 3:53:09 AM
> Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness.I think you're underestimating how fickle consumers are, and how much their choices are based on fashion and emotion. A couple more of these, and OpenAI will find itself relegated to the kids' table with Grok and Perplexity. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/08/15/1121900/gpt4o-gr...
by CharlesW
2/26/2026 at 1:46:29 PM
I still use perplexity. Which tool is better currently?by jcbrand
2/26/2026 at 6:12:50 PM
I don't think chat history is enough for real stickiness.But the trillion dollar question is, what is? Now that I think about it, I'd bet heavily on Google. They've got your email, your photos, your location history, yada yada. Once they're able to pull all that into AI and make a reasonably cohesive product out of it, it seems like that's what people would use by default. Plus they've got a browser, search page, and phone OS that all can lead you to their AI.
They could train custom LoRA layers to mimic your tone, encode special tokens that indicate your name and data and various facts about you and your contacts, to make output more accurate, consistent, and personalized. Lots of possibilities for increased stickiness.
Even enterprise-wise, gemini is pretty good at coding and if your company has all its docs on Google docs, that could become a pretty seamless integration. They can even build their agents to prefer GCP, or maybe make that the free tier but have other providers support be more expensive.
At some point, a reasonable business model might be "we replace your engineering team with AI plus a few Google engineers on retainer for when things get wonky," which could scale to pretty large. (Granted this sounds more like a msft power move.)
They already have all the infrastructure, all they need is a reasonable competitor to github. They really screwed up losing out to msft on that one!
by daxfohl
2/26/2026 at 7:51:10 AM
Is she paying for it? That is the only question that matters in the end.For myself, I use LLMs daily and I would even say a lot on some days and I _did_ pay the 20€/mo subscription for ChatGPT, but with the latest model I cannot justify that anymore.
4o was amazingly good even if it had some parasocial issues with some people, it actually did what I expect an LLM to do. Now the quality of the 5.whatever has gone drastically down. It no longer searches web for things it doesn't know, but instead guesses.
Even worse is the tone it uses; "Let's look at this calmly" and other repeated sentences are just off putting and make the conversation feel like the LLM thinks I am about to kill myself constantly and that is not what I want from my LLM.
by nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 7:54:59 AM
>Is she paying for it? That is the only question that matters in the end.Don't underestimate advertising. Noone pays for Facebook or Google search. Yet the ad business with a couple billion users seems profitable enough to fund frontier LLM research and inference infrastructure as a side-gig in these companies. Google only rushed out AI overview because they saw ChatGPT eating their market share in information retrieval and Zuck is literally panicking about the fact that users share more personal details with OpenAI than on his doomscrolling attention sinks.
by sigmoid10
2/26/2026 at 12:46:05 PM
> Don't underestimate advertising.OpenAI is talking out of their ass with their advertising plans. Meta and Google are an advertising duopoly, extremely anti-competitive, and basically defrauding their own customers. OpenAI can't just replicate that.
Worse still is that OpenAI has no competitive edge. All the hype around their advertising plans is based on the idea that they can blend the ads right into the response, a turbocharged version of Native Advertising.
This is explicitly illegal. Very explicitly.
The US' FTC may have been declawed by the current US government, but the rest of the west will nuke them from orbit over it. Doubtless OpenAI will try some stunt alike marking the entire LLM response as "this is an ad", but that won't satisfy the regulators.
This only gets worse with further problems. An LLM hallucinating product features is going to invoke regulator wrath as well, and an LLM deciding to cut off the adcopy early will invoke the wrath of the advertiser.
> Yet the ad business with a couple billion users seems profitable enough to fund frontier LLM research and inference infrastructure as a side-gig in these companies
Also important: Not anymore. The tech giants are now issuing quite a lot of debt to pay for the AI plans.
by SlinkyOnStairs
2/26/2026 at 10:05:57 PM
> This is explicitly illegal.Is it really any different than product placement in TV shows/movies?
by parliament32
2/26/2026 at 8:00:34 AM
Maybe I am underestimating how suggestible average people are as someone who has never in their lives clicked on an ad I just can't see ads being anything but a deterrent for using the serviceby nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 9:37:25 AM
>Maybe I am underestimatingYou sure are. And it sounds like you are also underestimating the effect yourself as well. In fact this perception is so common that there is even a name for it in psychology: Third-person effect. Many people believe that advertising does not affect them. But ironically, the more you believe so, the more likely you are to fall victim to particular types of advertising. And in general your response to ads will be very similar to everyone else's. These "annoying" ads that you "would never click on" are just badly personalized or badly placed ads. That's the only type that gets stuck in your mind when you think of ads, based on your personal biases. But the major tech companies have spent the last one-and-a-half decades on perfecting the psychology of advertising. You might think you are immune, but you are certainly not. Every buying decision you have made in the last 10 years was almost certainly influenced to some degree. Just not always consciously. And I'm willing to bet that a lot of buying decisions were already heavily influenced by ChatGPT, even before their shopping feature. OpenAI just didn't profit on them as much as they could.
by sigmoid10
2/26/2026 at 10:55:39 AM
Influenced to some degree sure, weather influences me to some degree, but I truly feel like ads aren't affective on me. Unless we broaden definition of ads to something like sponsored content. I have bought some TTRPG rules sets after I have seen them being played in a sponsored video, but I still have never clicked an ad on a page and bought something.And I actually have tried to use ChatGPT to buy something. I have asked it to search for specific items from EU stores so I wouldn't need to pay import taxes, but usually it fails. It either suggests Global stores which ship from US or China or it suggests different products than what I asked for.
If ChatGPT or whatever LLM I was using could actually link me the products I wanted without me searching for them they should get a commission for sure, but we sure aren't there yet.
by nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 12:04:42 PM
Sponsored content is definitely a form of advertisementby edgyquant
2/26/2026 at 8:32:02 AM
I agree with you, I can't stand adsHowever, I believe an ad it still influences you subconsciously as long as it is in your sight line.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lot of investigation into subtly slipping advertising in the LLM responses the way Korean dramas have product placement right in the storyline (Subway, bbq chicken, beverages, makeup, etc).
by smiley1437
2/26/2026 at 11:02:59 AM
Subtle things like the guy in CSI Miami talking about how good Subway is for 5 minutes?Of course stuff in the world influences me, I am still a human. Still I have never clicked an ad and bought something. I simply don't get who would. Same as with the super market placing candy and stuff next to the cashier to get people to buy more, I have never been swayed by those because when I go to the store I am always on a mission and know before hand what I am buying.
It would be cool to see all the times I have been influenced into buying something because of subconscious advertisement, but that's kind a impossible so all I can do is deny it and of course all marketing people will say that I am wrong.
And we can argue forever what counts as an advertisement. For example I recently bought a new mouse pad, I wasn't particularly looking for a specific one, just something fun and bright and as I was browsing a web store they had a cool design for half off and I bought it. Maybe that was targeted advertisement, but I had already made the decision to buy a new mousepad and had been browsing on and off for few weeks, so was it really? I would argue not.
by nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 1:41:29 PM
You seem to have defined ads as "obvious calls to action that end up in me buying it for sure". That's a pretty narrow view of marketing, but it does feel like you are aware that there may be other forms as you provide examples across the thread. It comes off as some form of elitism, where you deem the simplest ads as ineffective on yourself (but work on "average people") - but then go on to mention things like discounts and sponsorships, which to most are obvious marketing ploys too. No judgement, but maybe reflect on this?by yunohn
2/26/2026 at 2:45:20 PM
Is discount really an ad? Like if I had already made a decision to buy a thing and now I paid less for it was it really a working ad?Also sponsored content is way different than having ads on a website or in an app or what kind of ads do you think GPT will have?
And you are definitely judging me. When people say “ads” that is pretty specific thing that they mean. If you broaden it to mean everything then I can’t argue as there is no point.
There is two options either ads (as in those things every one blocks with uBlock Origin) do not work on people OR they do work on most people but not on me, if anything they are a deterrent from buying that product.
by nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 3:47:57 PM
Here’s the FTC’s definition of an ad:> Any message designed to promote or sell a product, service, or brand, where there is a material connection between the speaker and the advertiser.
Yes, a discount is an ad - sometimes by the brand/manufacturer to get you to buy their product instead of a competitor, or by the seller to sell that product over others (for even mundane reasons like stock clearing).
Yes, sponsored content is an ad. The content creator is reimbursed for their output that is used to convince viewers to perform some purchase activity, usually over alternatives.
You’re really severely restricting the definition yourself by claiming an ad is “things that ublock origin” blocks. They can’t block physical banners and billboards or TV commercial breaks - does that now make them not ads? Whether you intended to buy something again doesn’t disqualify something from being an ad. In fact, that’s often when an ad is most effective - to buy the one they show you, instead of one you haven’t heard of or considered.
by yunohn
2/26/2026 at 8:26:10 AM
Ads aren't just for click through, they are for suggestions, and mind share as well.You can't click on the budweiser logo when watching super bowl ad. But if you sit in your chatgpt window all day then it's probably worth it for advertisers to expect to build familiarity with brands they advertise.
by minraws
2/26/2026 at 11:05:06 AM
Really depends what the ads are. If they are popups or other intrusive ads the product will just die. If they are subtle hints in the text how are you going to track it. I don't know, I just don't believe in ads, but then again I am dirty commie so who am I to tell you not toby nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 12:07:46 PM
That’s not the point. The point is that brands build awareness through ads that don’t require clicking and this ha effected you whether you want to admit it or notby edgyquant
2/26/2026 at 2:47:09 PM
And my point is that I don’t care. I don’t watch ads, I don’t buy things because of ads.by nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 6:59:46 PM
Your messages are very consistent, it all adds up and makes perfect sense.I don't care either.
Online I get lots of ads blocked, but not all, I really don't put much effort into it beyond default.
So what if I am "influenced" if it doesn't effect any significant part of my behavior.
One thing I never do is respond with money.
I'm just not a "consumer" so that goes back before the internet.
Sure I see ads thrown at me which keep me aware of those brands but the only buys I make would happen without any ads.
On the rare occasion that I want to make a significant purchase, then I will seek out the ad. Oh the horror !
But I want to see how honest I think it is compared to a number of reviews. It's really pretty neutral since it's just as much me using the ad as the ad using me, plus equally good for knowing what looks good to buy as knowing what brand not to buy.
Then there's the interesting way when an overall economic downturn gets rougher you see ads for things that almost never need advertising for years in a row, or never have before :\
OTOH you also see some of the most trivial stuff that must be flying off the shelf and all you can do is shake your head ;)
by fuzzfactor
2/26/2026 at 9:53:14 AM
Imagine subliminal messages being sent in the llm responses carefully created for max impact on you. I’m sure many companies will pay to recommend their product on ChatGPT.by skeptic_ai
2/26/2026 at 10:56:17 AM
Okay, but if we are going scifi why not just beam ads in to dreams like in Futurama?by nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 11:10:42 AM
The word "subliminal" and its connotations aside, it's not like subtly influencing people without them noticing is anything new.by Sharlin
2/26/2026 at 10:58:37 AM
> Maybe I am underestimatingAdvertising is one of the biggest markets on the planet. Meta is nearly a $2T company and is making record profits.
by echelon
2/26/2026 at 7:57:11 AM
not necessarily, if openai managed to monetize free users. Could be through advertising, or integrations with marketplaces on commission (e.g. order your next Hello Fresh through ChatGPT? Get recommended a hotel?)They could succeed where Alexa failed. A free user can even bring in more than a paid user if you look at some platforms like spotify, where apparently there is a large chunk of free users generating more income through ads than if they would pay
by dahcryn
2/26/2026 at 8:01:30 AM
We are so far away from ordering stuff from LLMby nextlevelwizard
2/26/2026 at 8:07:06 AM
Not really!I was researching CAVA ( due to the crazy earnigs announcement yesterday ) and it was displaying some nice links to the website, all suffixed with ?utm=chatgpt
So, it has begun!
by ccozan
2/26/2026 at 12:46:28 PM
Most potential customers wouldn't ever think in terms as "justifying" a €20 purchase when the product is great.ChatGPT (and competitors) is an incredibly high value tool, and €20 per month is nothing for somebody who wants or needs it. It's just a matter of if they use it enough to start hitting the daily limits.
by carlosjobim
2/26/2026 at 7:14:35 PM
>no longer searches web for things it doesn't know, but instead guesses.This could very well have been a cost-reduction effort to try and simulate what it was doing before.
Somebody must think training has already looked at the web enough, or there may be too much slop now that there was no contingency for.
Then you've got tighter guardrails to make it more palatable for a wider audience.
I guess different people would draw the line differently, but when it goes from being worth money to not worth it any more that could be an enshittification effect.
Especially if things like that accelerate.
by fuzzfactor
2/26/2026 at 2:15:40 PM
> Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue.I’ve got a small-ish sample of friends who are regular people and use various AI chatbots because mobile phone providers now commonly bundle an AI subscription with their services. People seem to switch between Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT without any trouble. It does not look sticky at all to me and the half-a-percent difference in benchmarks we love to obsess about does not translate at all in increased user satisfaction.
by kergonath
2/26/2026 at 7:04:20 AM
I hear the claim that people already have their conversation on ChatGPT and can't move them. I'm curious, what are these discussions like? I've never continued an old discussion, I just start a new one every time I have a question. If the discussion is long, I often start a new chat to get a blank slate. My experience is that the chat history just causes confusion.So I'm curious to understand: What are the discussions like that people go back to and would lose if they moved to another platform?
by tikotus
2/26/2026 at 7:10:23 AM
In my experience non-technical folks quite dig the memory feature. For me that's kinda context poisoning as a service, but I know people that get value out of it (or at least strongly feel they do). Not sure how one would migrate that.by fhd2
2/26/2026 at 8:58:36 AM
OpenAI will send you a download link of all your data in a zip file. You can feed it to Gemini or Claude or whatever.by operatingthetan
2/26/2026 at 12:36:55 PM
It's one of those super easy things that 90% of the users just never do - like changing their default search engine, export their social graph, install ad blockers, etc.by jcfrei
2/26/2026 at 7:56:37 AM
> Not sure how one would migrate that.Ctrl-C Ctrl-V?
by otabdeveloper4
2/26/2026 at 11:27:58 AM
Regardless of whether there is value in chat history or not, for some people it is important.Back in the day during the music streaming wars there were tons of "move your playlists from A to B" services. Streaming services could not hold on to customers because all their playlists were on there.
I'm sure that similar services will pop up for chatbots.
Also, you can always just ask your chatbot to generate a file with your chat history, given that it's all part of the context anyway.
by beAbU
2/26/2026 at 8:28:16 AM
I'm curious from the other direction, what are the conversations like if you feel they are easy to move?Do you have the memory feature disabled? I have the feeling this in particular is doing absolutely loads behind the scene, e.g summarising all conversations and adding additional hidden context to every request.
I can start a new chat in the UI right now, ask it what my job is, what my current project is, how many kids I have, what car I drive etc. It'll know the answer already.
I think it's this conversation history - or maybe better yet if we think of it as this "relationship" - that people are saying is going to make it hard to move.
by hereonout2
2/26/2026 at 10:51:33 AM
I ask for code snippets, occasional recipes, translations... I don't have memory enabled. I start a new chat for each question. At times I ask things in different languages, if the question is tied to culture or location. If I notice I asked the wrong question, I start a new session instead of continuing the old one, so it doesn't try to merge the questions somehow.I don't see any benefit in it knowing anything about me. Instead I'm usually quite vague to avoid biased answers.
by tikotus
2/26/2026 at 9:58:29 AM
yeah the 'sessions' approach is probably going to be deprecated. one continuous chat is where it's at , perhaps with some bookmarks on the side for easy accessor perhaps a thread-based chat like reddit or HN, where you can branch off an older conversation with yourself
by seydor
2/26/2026 at 12:21:25 PM
That would suck. I hate context being carried between conversations. I’ve had memory turned off since the start.by dyauspitr
2/26/2026 at 9:34:16 PM
I disagree. Are people really that attached to their conversations though?Anecdotally, the vast majority of my own conversations and coding interactions are transient in nature, to the point where I prefer to use the ‘temporary’ mode in whatever tool I’m using.
For coding, every project needs a plan and readme to get whatever agent back up to speed with what the task is. Anyone with a paid-for GH Copilot license knows that you can just switch between whatever provider at a whim, depending on the needs of your task or financial requirements.
I think people will find it easier to revert back to Siri 2.0 if that ever materialises, in which case the stickiness moat is bridged by a more familiar and widely integrated abstraction layer.
by greggsy
2/26/2026 at 4:13:56 PM
My wife, for example, uses [Netscape Navigator] on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on [bookmarks] on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere.See how stupid it sounds?
by tantalor
2/26/2026 at 6:24:18 PM
Given how long people have stuck with Internet Explorer, I don't think this is a good example.by vaylian
2/26/2026 at 6:54:57 PM
Internet Explorer doesn't exist anymore!by tantalor
2/26/2026 at 4:24:27 AM
Anecdata point: I canceled my ChatGPT pro subscription last year over some shitty thing Altman did at OpenAI and easily moved over to Claude. The only thing I took with me was the system prompt or whatever it's called, I couldn't care less about my conversation history. I'm planning to do the same thing with my Claude subscription if Anthropic kowtows to the Pentagon. These services are not sticky at all IMO.by nozzlegear
2/26/2026 at 1:26:58 PM
Anthropic already decided to do business with the "killing people" department of the government. I think the battle was lost there, rather than whether or not they cross a line in the sand they drew to act as if they're the ethical AI company despite making products that are used to kill people. I'm sure the result of this battle will be some compromise that allows the Pentagon to get whatever they want while offering a fig leaf to Anthropic to continue their ethicality show.by ndiddy
2/26/2026 at 4:49:23 PM
Yes, I just caught up on all the Anthropic x Pentagon news this morning. I've canceled my subscription and let them know why in the feedback. It's too bad because I liked the Claude models, but I can easily swap the Claude app out with DuckDuckGo and use one of the open models my DDG subscription supports.by nozzlegear
2/26/2026 at 7:22:32 AM
Anthropic donated $20 million to Public First Action[1], a PAC that promotes Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and her sponsored Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)[2], a bill that will force everyone to scan their faces and IDs to use the internet under the guise of saving the children.The legislative angle taken by companies like Anthropic is that they will provide the censorship gatekeeping infrastructure to scan all user-generated content that gets posted online for "appropriateness", guaranteeing AI providers a constant firehose of novel content they can train on and get paid for the free training. AI companies will also get paid to train on videos of everyone's faces and IDs.
As for why Blackburn supports KOSA[3]:
> Asked what conservatives’ top priorities should be right now, Senator Blackburn answered, “protecting minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence.” She then talked about how KOSA could address this problem, and named social media platforms as places “where children are being indoctrinated.”
If Anthropic, the PACs it supports and Blackburn get their way with KOSA, the end result will be that anything posted on the internet will be able to be traced back to you. Web platforms will finally be able to sell their userbases as identifiable and monetizable humans to their partners/advertisers/governments/facial recognition systems/etc. AI companies will legally enshrine themselves as the official gatekeepers and censors of the internet, and they will be paid to train on the totality of novel human creativity in real-time.
That will be their moat.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/anthropic-gives-20-million-t...
[2] https://publicfirstaction.us/news/public-first-action-and-de...
[3] https://www.them.us/story/kosa-senator-blackburn-censor-tran...
by heavyset_go
2/26/2026 at 5:35:27 AM
Where are you thinking of moving to?by Scrapemist
2/26/2026 at 6:30:48 AM
I have been positively surprised with Mistral which I have been trying out.by kristiandupont
2/26/2026 at 6:02:46 AM
I'd probably swap to one of the open models available through my DuckDuckGo subscription. I don't keep up with the AI hype so I don't know what options exist out there beyond ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini right now.by nozzlegear
2/26/2026 at 4:17:20 AM
It would literally take you 5 mins to set up your wife with a competing client for her needs.Sure it's 'sticky' at least a little, but it's not a moat. A moat is a show stopper like they own you.
by keyle
2/26/2026 at 6:03:52 AM
Just like it would take 10 seconds to buy her a Pepsi instead of her preferred Coke.Would you?
by brookst
2/26/2026 at 10:08:02 PM
If you could move the taste with the ease of OpenAI's Export Data tool? Sure, why not?by parliament32
2/26/2026 at 8:05:28 AM
Stickyness absolutely helps. But it won't get you anywhere close to a MAG7 operating margin. I think we are already seeing the start of price wars. I cancelled my ChatGPT subscription once i realized Gemini Pro was included in my Google Workspace and never looked back for a second.by swexbe
2/26/2026 at 6:10:34 AM
Coke doesn't change their recipe every year.by BoredPositron
2/26/2026 at 10:55:42 AM
If it taste as good and is cheaper, sure.by Staross
2/26/2026 at 6:19:26 AM
No, because that’s a product you buy for flavor and Pepsi is a different flavor.by kortilla
2/26/2026 at 7:09:21 AM
UI style and response tone aren’t flavors?by brookst
2/26/2026 at 3:16:23 PM
now youre arguing openAI has a distinctly better product not just that they are hoping for high switching costsby anthonypasq
2/26/2026 at 3:52:06 PM
No, not at all.I am arguing that “distinctly better” isn’t the most important thing in consumer products. Habits, familiarity, and individual taste at far far more important.
People just build affinity to products. The vast majority of people buy the same brand toothpaste they grew up with. “Better” isn’t even a consideration.
by brookst
2/26/2026 at 6:53:23 AM
10 seconds to buy my wife a Pepsi? Why that estimate seems quite absurd.First I would have to walk 10 miles into town. Then I would have to locate a purveyor of goods that carried Pepsi-Cola products...
Then I reckon we would spend a fort-minute dickering over price.
And finally trudging back home with my Pepsi product in tow.
Why, I'd be lucky to accomplish this herculean task in the very same evening.
by h33t-l4x0r
2/26/2026 at 4:51:08 AM
Idk, habit and the devil you know are powerful as hell. Google has enshittified search nearly beyond imagination, but it's still where the vastly overwhelming majority of people search.by atomicnumber3
2/26/2026 at 4:55:33 AM
What free search engine today performs significantly better? No seriously Google sucks and I want an alternative. Do I need to pay for Kagi to get decent search?by tcoff91
2/26/2026 at 7:46:46 AM
> but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere.Except these aren't conversations in the traditional sense. Yes, there's the history of prompts and responses exchanged. But the threads don't build on each other - there's no cross-conversational memory, such as you'd have in a human relationship. Even within a conversation it's mostly stateless, sending the full context history each time as input.
So there's no real data or network effect moat - the moat is all in model quality (which is an extremely competitive race) and harness quality (same). I just don't think there's any real switching cost here.
by candu
2/26/2026 at 8:15:27 AM
This is not the case.I use OpenAI a lot on the paid plan via the UI. It now knows absolutely loads about me and seems to have a massive amount of cross conversational memory. It's really getting very close to what you'd expect from a human conversation in this regard.
Sure the model itself is still stateless, and if you use the API then what you say is true.
But they are doing so much unseen summarisation and longer context building behind the scenes in the webapp, what you see in the current conversation history is just a fraction of what is getting sent to the model.
by hereonout2
2/26/2026 at 12:51:02 PM
> It now knows absolutely loads about meBaffled that someone tech literate would be boasting about this in the year 2026. I mean, you do you, we all have different priorities and threat vectors, but this is the furthest from what I would personally want.
by datsci_est_2015
2/26/2026 at 1:24:33 PM
It's not boasting, I'm not sure why what I wrote would come across that way. I'm describing how I use a product and the functionality it presents to me.But yes, it's an emerging area and I am questioning if I am sharing too much with it. I 100% would not want my chat histories exposed.
Saying that though, facebook can read my highly personal messages, google every email, my phone is tracking my every move, I have to sign up for random janky websites for my kids school where ther medical info is stored, etc.
LLM chat history presents a new risk and a different set of data, but it's a crowded minefield already.
by hereonout2
2/26/2026 at 1:34:30 PM
This is the same as when Google got big (and Facebook, etc...). We have some privacy focused competitors (Kagi, etc...) but most people are quite happy to just give Google (and worse, Facebook) everything.AI is just a new technology but this has been ramping up for decades now.
by AdamN
2/26/2026 at 8:11:25 AM
I see people who have conversations spanning months. They don't start new threads and instead go back to existing threads to continue the topic. They also reference the prior threads discussion many times.This would feel like a switching cost for people who use the system that way.
by matwood
2/26/2026 at 7:41:36 PM
They need to do some sort of shared chat. Like being able to start a thread then invite another chatGPT user to join on the conversation. That would add some network effects and switching cost.Maybe they already have this? I'm not a paid user.
by kbelder
2/26/2026 at 7:58:23 AM
ChatGPT and Gemini has cross conversation personalization. I believe the former is off by default and the latter is on.by basch
2/26/2026 at 11:56:58 AM
Is there more detailed information how this works? I used to assume that it can be beneficial to switch to a new chat to avoid having took much irrelevant context in the interaction. How does this personalization happen, how does it decide which parts are relevant from one conversation to another?It doesn't seem like there's a way to inspect or alter what kind of information Gemini had saved as "important information" about me (apart from deleting chats entirely, apparently).
by strangegecko
2/26/2026 at 1:29:15 PM
There’s a toggle in every new Gemini chat to turn off personalization for that chat. I assume you need to make sure it’s mom globally first?by basch
2/26/2026 at 3:04:11 PM
On the web app, I see the "temporary chat" option but no toggle. It tells me temporary chats aren't used for model training. I thought I remembered that chats of Pro customers aren't used for that in any case. Hard to keep track of all this stuff.Ultimately, I think the crossover memory is useful, but I'd really like to know exactly what's in there and an ability to validate/adjust, not just on/off.
by strangegecko
2/26/2026 at 3:45:26 PM
Model training is completely different than keeping a summary of chats on the side and injecting it as context.In my Gemini app, when k click new chat and click the filters button I have “Personalize Intelligence: Personalize chat when helpful.”
It is on every time I click new chat. Maybe you need to enable it in settings first. I can disable it to have a clean chat without personal context, but preserve the chat history unlike temporary chat.
by basch
2/26/2026 at 4:27:39 PM
I understand they are separate processes (compacting memories vs training new models), it just surprised me to read that my chats are used for training.This is how it's presented: "Temporary chats Opens in a new window don't appear in Recent Chats Opens in a new window or Gemini Apps Activity Opens in a new window and aren't used to train models or personalize your experience."
I'm guessing you're maybe on iOS? I don't see these UI elements, not in the App on my phone nor in direct web access.
by strangegecko
2/26/2026 at 7:39:27 PM
I have them in the web as well.by basch
2/26/2026 at 4:53:51 AM
> The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue.People used to suggest this about MySpace.
by protocolture
2/26/2026 at 7:05:29 AM
MySpace never had close to a billion users.by kristianc
2/26/2026 at 8:21:27 AM
300 million users in 2007 is mighty impressive, the internet was not absolutely ubiquitous like now, mobile access to it was in its infancy. Relatively speaking it is as impressive as 1 billion users in 2026.by piva00
2/26/2026 at 8:02:06 AM
But everyone had at least one friend, Tom.by carlmr
2/26/2026 at 4:52:06 AM
Yahoo, altavista, askjeeves, GoogleFriendster, MySpace, Facebook
Netscape, ie, chrome
Icq, aim, MSN messenger, a million other chat apps
First mover advantage doesn't last long
Very high chance that the winner in five years is a company that does not yet exist
by daxfohl
2/26/2026 at 4:42:25 AM
In theory you can export your data from ChatGPT under Settings > Data Controls. In practice, I tried this recently and the download link was broken. Convenient bug I must say.by randerson
2/26/2026 at 5:12:51 AM
Make sure you're logged in to chatgpt.com in the same browser you're using to access that link.by akhilchaturvedi
2/26/2026 at 5:26:02 AM
How would you navigate to it if you were not?by svnt
2/26/2026 at 8:47:42 PM
My nontechnical friends only know about ChatGPT, all other LLMs are a complete and total mystery to them outside of what is built into Google's search engine and Copilot. I imagine they represent the majority of consumers. It'd require significant marketing campaign for most of them to switch or for OpenAI to make a substantial mistake.by tyjen
2/26/2026 at 8:52:53 PM
do they use facebook or instagram? meta jammed their LLM into the search box there. Do they use google at all? the AI summary produced by Gemini leads you to click on "more details" with gemini.so while this is technically true: > My nontechnical friends only know about ChatGPT
they may actually use a ton of other LLMs without knowing
by twelve40
2/26/2026 at 12:48:42 PM
I think that kind of inertia mostly lasts as long as there is no financial incentive to move. A ChatGPT user who is not paying anything to OpenAI is of little benefit to them, and has little incentive to switch. However if OpenAI start trying to make money off those users by adding advertising, or removing the free tier, then things may change. Google can afford to subsidize chat from their other revenue streams, but OpenAI can't.by HarHarVeryFunny
2/26/2026 at 1:41:50 PM
>However if OpenAI start trying to make money off those users by adding advertising, or removing the free tier, then things may change.Tech forums tend to be in a bit of a bubble. People said the same thing about Netflix and it just quickly became their most popular sub. People don't care about advertising unless it's really obnoxious.
The idea that people will unsub en masse once Open AI starts rolling ads is a pipe dream. And the kind of user that won't pay and won't suffer some ads is the kind of user nobody wants.
by famouswaffles
2/26/2026 at 6:23:59 PM
Customers come back to Netflix since they have the best content out of all the streaming providers. This is their moat.ChatGPT, on the other hand, is literally exactly identical to their competitors for the most common use cases.
by swexbe
2/26/2026 at 6:55:58 PM
Customers stay at Netflix because it's cheap, what they're used to, and it has enough on the catalogue to keep people satisfied most of the time. They're not constantly evaluating who has the better catalogue. And most of that catalogue is content they have no real ownership of anyway, at least, until the WB buyout is finalized.And Netflix is hardly the only example. Like clockwork, people here say the same thing about anyone including ads, to the same result - No-one cares.
This is just one of those things that is popular to say in these kinds of forums but has no bearing in real life. Most people are sticky with products they're satisfied with. They don't switch unless a competitor is:
- much cheaper
- much better
Neither of these is the case in the LLM consumer space. Nobody cares or notices that gemini topped the benchmarks for a couple months before being dethroned, and as far as new features and improvements is concerned, Open AI is the clear leader. All everyone did and still does is follow their lead, even down to the pricing model. Basically every single feature/model improvement you can think of in the LLM consumer space is something Open AI brought first and they get almost all the buzz from it.
by famouswaffles
2/26/2026 at 7:02:08 AM
ChatGPT has a good name. It's weird and awkward but it still rolls off the tongue. And I am saying that as a non native English speaker because the name has been migrated to other languages with the English pronunciation.In comparison, Claude's name is very bad, it just doesn't sound right and people might mishear me when I say it. I never say "Claude" when talking to other, especially non-technical people, and instead say "ChatGPT" even though I am using Claude exclusively.
Google has another problem - they advertise their models as separate products. There is Gemini and there is Nano Banana, also Nano Banana Pro. But they are all somehow under the same product which is still called Gemini. I understand the distinction but I am sure many non-technical people find it confusing.
by pllbnk
2/26/2026 at 7:27:31 AM
Claude may seem incongruous compared to the others, however it's the only human sounding name, compared to the robotic "chatgpt" or others that sound generic or bland company names (Gemini, perplexity).They intentionally chose a more bland sounding name, as, I assume, they wanted to emphasise the "safe" nature compared to their competitors.
As more information comes out about openai, people may choose to move to for other reasons, such as
- Openai adding ads
- Openai's president donating millions to a MAGA PAC
- Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.
- Openai's recent products not being at the top of the benchmarks
The choice is yours.
by scrollop
2/26/2026 at 9:31:01 AM
> They intentionally chose a more bland sounding name, as, I assume, they wanted to emphasise the "safe" nature compared to their competitors.A lack of creativity seems more likely to me. It’s a GPT in a chat window.
> Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.
Except they didn’t. They folded faster than a house of cards during an earthquake. It boggles the mind anyone thought they wouldn’t. Ultimately they only care about money and winning.
by latexr
2/26/2026 at 7:48:42 AM
> Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.by KronisLV
2/26/2026 at 7:43:40 AM
OpenAI has demonstrated a severe lack of ethics, you're right, it's just hard to know how educated the average consumer is about that. The anthropic-military thing is a big deal but I suspect few outside of the tech world really understand the implications of what's going on.Anectode: My aunt was talking about how she had a conversation with ChatGPT about how bad OpenAI was and the AI said "we need regulations", and that seemed to satisfy her somehow.
by Morromist
2/26/2026 at 8:44:52 AM
In Japan many people call it "Chappie" (チャッピー), which I think is much easier to say and less awkward, haha. I see a lot of people using it here daily.I feel like OpenAI should lean into that.
by alfg
2/26/2026 at 1:28:31 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film)by thegabriele
2/26/2026 at 7:24:14 AM
They initially wanted to call it just "Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (preview)" but the Internet stuck with the anonymous codename Nano-banana from LMArena because it's interesting and quirky. Google didn't officially adopt it until several days after the public release, exactly because of what you say. Eventually, not using it in their comms got more confusing because regular people were asking how they can find this Nano banana thing everyone is hyped about.by bonoboTP
2/26/2026 at 9:38:42 AM
I have heard "cloud code" many times from colleagues who do not really know what either cloud OR Claude Code is more than "stuff we should use".by kaffekaka
2/26/2026 at 10:49:23 AM
Whisper voice to text very rarely manages to make it Claude, here's some examples and I am not trying to make it badLord code, close code, Clawed code, load code, Claude Chatbot, Claude Code, cloud code.
I wish it had a better name. We know it was named after Claude Shannon. A very nerdy choice rather than a marketeer.
by delaminator
2/26/2026 at 8:28:18 AM
> ChatGPT has a good nameI don't know but around here common people all say "Chatty" nowadays, and also most people if writing the correct name fail to spell "gpt" right quite often in chat.
by anonyfox
2/26/2026 at 10:47:09 AM
Absolutely no enduser knows what 'GPT' stands for and if you tell them it's Generative Pre-trained Transformer they're even more confused than before.There's better brand names out there.
by ulfw
2/26/2026 at 5:53:58 PM
> Absolutely no enduser knows what 'GPT' stands forBut there is no need to know what it stands for.
by bradyd
2/26/2026 at 7:11:59 AM
Claude is a terrible name but Gemini is pretty good.by UltraSane
2/26/2026 at 7:59:47 PM
Names-wise, I think 'Grok' is pretty good, there's just lots of other baggage that comes along with it.I still hate how Microsoft ruined the value in the name 'Cortana'. If they had a modern LLM named Cortana with the right voice, I'd be very tempted to use it just because. What other LLM has a face associated with it?
by kbelder
2/26/2026 at 8:24:10 PM
Grok is way too nerdy and obscure.by UltraSane
2/26/2026 at 12:50:26 PM
I think defaultism plays a huge role. If your wife's next smartphone or TV or whatever comes with AI made by a different company, I think she won't really care and use that if it's good.By the way this is a perfectly rational stance. If the supermarket next to me stopped stocking Coca Cola, I would just by Pepsi.
by torginus
2/26/2026 at 7:35:19 AM
I don’t know how much of an anecdote it is, but all the non-tech people with whom I talk about IA only know chatGPT. Competition is either non existent or the same thing. Among those, no one wants to pay the service, they just stop using it when limits are reached. I can’t say which users can turn the market around but chatGPT is indeed burned in the mind of many and because they don’t care about tech and are not interested in tech they won’t search for any other service it seems. Even after many discussions they don’t remember the names of other IA I told themby shinycode
2/26/2026 at 8:36:51 AM
I would bet 100% of those people have either Apple or Android phone in their pocket. Android users already have easy access to Gemini, and Apple's Siri is going LLM soon enough as well.Google and Apple just need to push their AI assistants hard enough, and most of the moat OpenAI has will be gone.
by rwyinuse
2/26/2026 at 3:28:32 PM
Apple licensed Gemini so both Android and IPhone will point to google's AI.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-05/apple-pla...
by chasd00
2/26/2026 at 7:58:13 AM
The only two models I ever hear non technical people mention are ChatGPT and occasionally Geminiby foo42
2/26/2026 at 4:56:13 AM
> The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue.> My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else.
Is she paying for it? Because as we have seen repeatedly in the past, paid products whither and die when Microsoft bundles a default replacement.
You need to provide a really good reason why this time its different.
by lelanthran
2/26/2026 at 5:08:48 AM
I believe specifically for Microsoft, they did bundle a default replacement for chatGPT in a lot of different places (Bing chat, Copilot) which use OpenAI models! But the end product is notably worse than native interface. There is a bare-minimum-level of usability required.For chat apps, good enough is good enough. For something as universally useful and easy to use as ChatGPT, the bar is higher. I don't want to comment on the financial feasibility, but whatever Microsoft put out has been a complete flop even when free, making ChatGPT $8 subscription seem worth it in comparison
by junipertea
2/26/2026 at 5:38:04 AM
> But the end product is notably worse than native interface.That was my point - a lot of superior products were eaten by poor bundled replacements.
Last I checked, copilot has more users than ChatGPT simply because users are using it from within Excel, Word, Outlook and Teams, without even knowing that they are using copilot. It's bundled into Windows.
Right now, copilot is more useful to users than ChatGPT because it is embedded into their workflows.
by lelanthran
2/26/2026 at 8:34:06 AM
Copilot doesn't have users. They're rebranding their non-llm offerings as copilot to make it not look like a failureby 3836293648
2/26/2026 at 5:41:48 AM
ChatGPT and all the competitors have the exact same UI and UX.by akie
2/26/2026 at 11:39:31 AM
Why would you want to move conversations with you? I use multiple different models, I don't care about the history.My "brain" in terms of projects, is local on my computer. I have a simple set of system rules that I need to copy.
I am not everyone, I understand that. What I try to say: don't overestimate the lock in effect of AI. I doubt there is one.
by y42
2/26/2026 at 1:30:25 PM
> I don't care about the history.I've actually been using the Gemini app more because it auto-deletes old history. I like using LLMs without thinking this is going to stick around forever.
Models are relatively interchangeable for day-to-day use anyway.
by benhurmarcel
2/26/2026 at 5:46:57 PM
> people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhereNeither can they be easily searched nor organized. And what prolonged AI use teaches you is: don't search for that old chat, just ask anew.
That particular piece of flypaper isn't as sticky as it may seem.
by btbuildem
2/26/2026 at 5:24:42 PM
I imagine the stickiest customers would be large enterprises. You aren't going to get the evangelists to stick on a single model provider, so their best bet is probably employees who are going to have their choices dictated to them by whoever purchases the softare. (Especially in large enterprises where using an unapproved AI provider is likely not allowed, or the AI is imposed on the workers.) The question then is, how do you differentiate yourself in enterprise sales? As much as people seem to dislike Copilot, from a business standpoint "buy the extra microsoft thing in our current contract" or "buy the extra google thing in our current contract" could likely be a lot cheaper/less friction.by overgard
2/26/2026 at 3:40:07 AM
> My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else.Ads might change that. If we know anything, nobody beats Google with ad based monetization. OAI is absolutely correct to be scared.
by pm90
2/26/2026 at 11:17:57 AM
The moment openai starts charging for their service properly, people will start shopping around.See power users such as devs with coding assistants that have model selection dropdowns allowing you to switch on a whim. There is zero loyalty or stickiness in the paying user crowd.
by beAbU
2/26/2026 at 11:28:03 AM
Or using adsby aaronrobinson
2/26/2026 at 11:29:31 AM
Ads are a little more insidious, and normies aren't nearly as allergic to them as they should be. But whether openAI can achieve their revenue targets by ads alone is a different question.by beAbU
2/26/2026 at 11:29:36 AM
I am starting to believe that OAI might actually succeed at getting per token inference cost to where it needs to be. Or that it's already there in principle.Wafer scale compute is a very big deal. Most of HN is probably still unaware that you can get tokens out of one of these devices right now via public API offerings.
by bob1029
2/26/2026 at 4:09:55 AM
> people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere.I just asked it to build me a searchable indexed downloaded version of all my conversations. One shot, one html page, everything exported (json files).
I’m sure I could ask Claude to import it. I don’t see the moat.
by lll-o-lll
2/26/2026 at 4:13:21 AM
How do you know all your conversations are in there?Honest question I have this issue a lot with AI claims. Nobody verifies the output.
by ziznznzb
2/26/2026 at 4:35:34 AM
I did verify the output. You can download your stuff via their apiby lll-o-lll
2/26/2026 at 6:24:53 AM
Ok so it worked correctly today, for you. How do we know it will continue to do so five years down the road when they are suffocating for cash? The more stuff we have there, the harder it becomes to verify their takeout will have everything.by mcny
2/26/2026 at 6:41:55 AM
I think it depends on the task.How bad it is if put of 200+ conversations, a couple of those are not exported correctly? Not much honestly. If I verify some of those and they are ok, I would see no reason to keep verifying all of them.
by gbalduzzi
2/26/2026 at 2:20:05 PM
How do you know anything five years down the road? You don't even know where you yourself will be.When proven wrong, hackers always say "Well in 5 years time or in 10 years time, things might have changed, so I was right and you were wrong".
It limits your own reasoning capabilities, and your satisfaction of always being right yet again will start diminishing with time.
by carlosjobim
2/26/2026 at 3:17:28 PM
Well said. I think people don't know when to just back down. Arguing the latest reply becomes a reflex rather than a 2-way discussion.by gosub100
2/26/2026 at 6:00:17 PM
I'm trying to motivate one or hopefully both of these ideas- if it is worth backup up or exporting, it is worth doing it early and often
- but more importantly if we backing up and exporting, we should be continuously thinking are we even on the right platform? Does a better alternative exist?
by mcny
2/26/2026 at 4:14:42 AM
So far I've not seen anyone complain that their conversations have gone missing. There's a GDPR-style export option that I've used a few times for my own.by simonw
2/26/2026 at 4:12:53 AM
there is no moat also because conversation history is useless. like saying “I cant move to DDG cause Google has my search history”by bdangubic
2/26/2026 at 4:25:59 AM
https://myactivity.google.com/myactivityit's not useless, although it used to be more useful than it is now.
by bryanrasmussen
2/26/2026 at 3:02:36 PM
Netscape had a 90% market share in 1995. If OpenAI is metaphorically netscape, what prevents its competitors from prying away customers every day? What prevents google/facebook/microsoft from using their position to bundle chat experiences? Especially if the tech is a commodity and OpenAI's models are about as good as everyone elses?by andrewmutz
2/26/2026 at 3:20:43 PM
In 1995 no one used the web still. Sure, we all did, but it was pretty niche. I think you could argue that chatbots are niche as well, but the user base of OpenAI is way larger now than Netscape in 1995. Netscape had probably 25 million users at the end of 1995. ChatGPT has about 800 million.by kenjackson
2/26/2026 at 5:38:20 PM
At this moment, I agree. Your average person (which doesn't really exist) has already been exposed and trained on ChatGPT. Arguing moving to another "chat" experience has not gone well, for example Bing, etc. Pretty sure Google had the "box" figured out first and won. I think people overthink how much effort people are willing to put into "change". There is nothing wrong with staying put if it works, after all, there is an unlimited number of other things happening in this world besides AI.by ronald_petty
2/26/2026 at 4:21:47 AM
OpenAI is already building complex user models. And I mean, super detailed user models - where you are from, what you do, what are your most vulnerable weaknesses, what you care about the most and everything else. This is information even the world's largest advertising company would struggle to put together across their fragmented eco-system (Gmail, Search, etc), but OpenAI has all this on a silver platter. And that scares me, because, a lot of people use ChatGPT as a therapist. We know this because of their advertising intent which they've explicitly expressed. Advertising requires good user models to work (so advertisers can efficiently target their audience) and it is the only way to prove ROI to the advertisers. "But, OpenAI said they won't do targeted ads..". Remember, Google said "Don't be evil" once upon a time too..That's ok, we use ChatGPT only for coding. We should be good, right? Umm, no. They already explicitly expressed the intention to take a percentage of your revenue if you shipped something with ChatGPT, so even the tech guys aren't safe.
"As intelligence moves into scientific research, drug discovery, energy systems, and financial modeling, new economic models will emerge. Licensing, IP-based agreements, and outcome-based pricing will share in the value created. That is how the internet evolved. Intelligence will follow the same path."
"Intelligence will follow the same path."
https://openai.com/index/a-business-that-scales-with-the-val...
So yes, OpenAI has the best chance to win on the consumer side than anyone else. But, that's not necessarily a good thing (and the OpenAI fanboys will hate me for pointing this out).
by neya
2/26/2026 at 7:33:26 AM
> They already explicitly expressed the intention to take a percentage of your revenue if you shipped something with ChatGPT, so even the tech guys aren't safe.Wasn't there already a ruling that LLM output is not protected by copyright?
by ahtihn
2/26/2026 at 11:44:51 AM
I hope that's the case. That would be really confidence inspiring.by neya
2/26/2026 at 9:44:35 AM
> Advertising requires good user models to work……and yet, everywhere I go I see massive advertisements on billboards, the sides of buildings, public transit, movie screens…
by biztos
2/26/2026 at 11:44:15 AM
Yes, but still, targeting is done even in billboards based on the location's demographics based on census data. It's not random. Some countries in Asia (like Singapore, Malaysia) have digital bill boards to target certain demographics based on the time of the day or the estimated crowd demographic at a given bus stop. And a few of them even track eyeballs to count "views" of the ad.by neya
2/26/2026 at 5:16:59 PM
I admit this is a factor I hadn't much considered. I'm sure at some point, if not already, the data collected by your phone will enable the equivalent of a tracking pixel on your physical location, so you can get personalized ads when you step into the subway car: the system will quickly evaluate which rider is most likely to spend money based on ads, and on what, and then an auction will be run in two nanoseconds and the winner will show their 10-second transit clip. Oof.The saddest part is, the old kind of advertising worked just fine, before all the companies got addicted to AdCrack.
by biztos
2/26/2026 at 2:04:19 PM
> The near billion users OpenAI hasThey're losing market share and the growth of active user plateaued. They captured all the normies who learned about llms on TV but these people will never spend a cent as you said.
They're not even on the top 10 most used llms on openrouter anymore: https://openrouter.ai/rankings
At the current pace anthropic will make more money than openai soon: https://epochai.substack.com/p/anthropic-could-surpass-opena...
https://menlovc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2-llm_api_mar...
by lm28469
2/26/2026 at 2:07:09 PM
I’m not rooting for open AI but OpenRouter is a very self selecting group. Most API users of Anthropocic or OpenAi would just go through the normal APIby ianm218
2/26/2026 at 2:19:07 PM
I'm surprised how many of my technical team use free ChatGPT in their personal lives. The rest have Claude subscriptions. I'm the only one with ChatGPT and Claude subs and I'll be switching from Claude Pro to Ckaude Max and cancelling ChatGPT, since I only use it when I hit my Claude quota.by ern
2/26/2026 at 9:56:15 AM
Google is sticky too, and has a huge moat around that access (android, browsers).Google hasn't yet pushed hard into dominating the chatGPT use case, but they could EASILY push out chatGPT if they tried. For example, if they instantly turned their search page to the gemini chat, they would instantly have dominated openAI use cases. I'm not saying they would do that, they will probably go for the 'everything app' approach slowly
I think the use cases of chatGPT and google are not differentiated enough to justify 2 winners
by seydor
2/26/2026 at 5:38:09 PM
I think there are users who view "their AI" as somewhere in the venn-diagram of their relationships.And it's a spectrum, at one end you got the full-on AI psychosis and at the other "its a machine, I owe it nothing".
Conversational AI is going to be sticky to the extent that you see a switch to a different provider as dropping a relationship.
by dontwannahearit
2/26/2026 at 6:19:26 PM
These articles are largely based on a false equivalence of LLM=moat.That's not the case. OpenAI is advancing on many fronts; codex, vectorStore, embeddings, response API, containers, batch processing, voice-to-speech, image generation... the list goes on.
by matchagaucho
2/26/2026 at 1:32:28 PM
I don't think they have a billion active users who opted-in. Google/Apple/Microsoft are the gatekeepers (for the most part) for retail users and they decide who is on by default. The USG isn't going to step-in and the EU won't step in either.So I suspect that Google will lean into Gemini, Microsoft will lean into OpenAI, and Apple ... it's a tough question what they do in the longer term.
For business users it's a different story and I see room for Anthropic to shine. And then there are the specialty AI services but those are all different markets from the general purpose AI.
by AdamN
2/26/2026 at 1:34:15 PM
I think Google may just end up winning on the good enough / cheap enough dimensions as things get more commoditized in LLM world.. in that they can be the lower cost provider given how vertically integrated they would be compared to OpenAI relying on hyperscalers.by steveBK123
2/26/2026 at 1:39:01 PM
I'm aligned there. I think it will be Google/Gemini gets 50% of the generic market and then OpenAI gets 30% (via Microsoft) and then a long tail. The rest of the vendors will be awesome at their markets (Claude Code for coders) and can handle generic stuff too.Apple will do whatever they do but it will solely drive users in the Apple ecosystem and they will likely just use one of the other vendors - I'm guessing Google longterm since they speak the same language. There's no point in empowering Anthropic/OpenAI to sit at the top of the pyramid although oddly Apple and OpenAI did that partnership but I feel like that was Apple not thinking ahead.
by AdamN
2/26/2026 at 3:26:22 PM
> Apple ... it's a tough question what they do in the longer term.my guess is the just keep licensing gemini and move on with making more money instead of selling 100 year bonds to raise debt.
by chasd00
2/26/2026 at 6:31:06 PM
>on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere.they can be super easily moved. just use the existing export feature, all a competitor needs is ability to import conversations.
by simg
2/26/2026 at 8:45:21 AM
Switching llms is like switching a car. Its a bit annoying in the beginning, it responds slightly different and you need to change you subconscious habits before it feels comfortable. Why everyone always complains about new models. So unless there is a very obvious improvement; most users will prefer to stick to their current llmby wouldbecouldbe
2/26/2026 at 8:51:15 AM
That has not been my experience at all. My mom and dad were able to switch from ChatGPT to Gemini without any friction whatsoever. I myself round robin between Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT all the time.by checker659
2/26/2026 at 9:24:46 AM
I disagree. So far I've seen people use "Photoshop" and "Google" as verbs. No one uses "ChatGPT" as a verb. People do use ChatGPT but the brand recognition isn't that strong.My anecdotes are that Google is winning even on consumer side.
by raincole
2/26/2026 at 9:49:30 AM
As a verb, no, but the product name somehow feels the wrong shape to verb it. I'd say the voice assistants have Google at a disadvantage for similar reasons: "OK Google" is clunky, whereas "Hey Siri," and "Alexa," are not.But to ChatGPT: when I wander around Berlin, I do overhear people talking about ChatGPT by name.
For all the typical integrated LLM-based "assistants" in other products, I mainly hear people saying things like "I hate it" and "how do I turn this off" and so on, including the one Google has on its search results.
The other pure-play chat-bots that have enough mind-share to even be in the news are Grok (where twitter users seem to like it a lot, even though everyone else up to and including non-US world governments hate it to the point of wanting it banned), Claude (but even then only because of Claude Code), and DeepSeek (because it shows China has no difficulty keeping up with the US). I heard about Mistrial when it was new, but even with the app on my phone I didn't think about it again until about a month ago.
Ask a normal person about Gemini, I'd expect them to think you were talking astrology, not AI.
by ben_w
2/26/2026 at 9:28:25 AM
> No one uses "ChatGPT" as a verb.In my experience, they do, a lot. "I asked ChatGPT" is something I hear a lot. And yes, this example is not using ChatGPT as a verb, but the idea of brand recognition is there; it's just a grammar thing.
by robotpepi
2/26/2026 at 11:12:15 AM
Today I heard at least 5 times something along the lines "I got this from ChatGPT", "I asked ChatGPT"...by widenrun
2/26/2026 at 9:50:56 AM
> I asked ChatGPT> use ChatGPT as a verb
Pick one. And yes I think they are worlds apart.
by raincole
2/26/2026 at 8:39:19 AM
Do people care about their old LLM sessions?I might have sessions I revisit over a few weeks, but nothing longer than that. The conversations feel as ephemeral as the code produced. Some tiny fractions of it might persist long term, but most of it is already forgotten and replaced by lunch time.
by KeplerBoy
2/26/2026 at 8:43:12 AM
My barber does. It's his therapist and the fact that it knows all about his life is very important to him.by scandox
2/26/2026 at 11:08:04 AM
>revealing all psychological exploits you have to 3rd party corporationScary shit
by u8080
2/26/2026 at 10:30:22 AM
I definitely think they’ve nailed the personality better than others too. Gemini and grok are always paragraphs and paragraphs of text to sift through for something that with openai is usually digested to much lessby hwers
2/26/2026 at 4:45:56 PM
They are more easily moved than other data honestly. You can use chat gpt to build your own chatbot and then export all of your data from openai and load it into the new chatbot.by fullstick
2/26/2026 at 11:37:29 AM
I don't really see that stickiness to be honest.Most people I know with android phones, myself included, just use Gemini which is bundled with the OS and has a dedicated button, has excellent data and integration with maps and such.
When it comes to enterprise, non IT companies (banking, insurance, etc) in Europe seem to be defaulting to Google's offerings, Gemini and NotebookLM in particular.
by epolanski
2/26/2026 at 3:47:20 AM
My wife uses Google AI overview - as an extension of search - on a daily basis and then jumps to Geminiby foogazi
2/26/2026 at 7:14:43 AM
How do you jump to Gemini from AIO? (I know there's AI mode, but it's separate from the Gemini chat product afaik -- except maybe sharing some model lineage)by tonfa
2/26/2026 at 12:21:25 PM
several of my friends named their chatgpt 'Amanda' or 'George' because they talked about real mental issues with it. I don't see them moving to another platform because that's essentially asking them to leave their 'best friend/therapist'.by puppymaster
2/26/2026 at 12:37:13 PM
... your friends should probably see a human therapist before going much further... I don't mean this in a flippant or insulting way.by estearum
2/26/2026 at 6:50:20 AM
Google has bigger network effect. It can stomp OpenAIby renegat0x0
2/26/2026 at 10:28:32 AM
As a counter anecdote, my wife stopped using it because it is quite terrible when you ask it about current events. She almost exclusively uses the Grok app now because it has the "best" internet search and current events resultsby s08148692
2/26/2026 at 10:34:57 AM
>the Grok app now because it has the "best" internet searchWhy is this? Thanks to Twitter? More aggressive proxy use? Tuned to deliver to stay competitive? …
Was under the impression they didn’t have much in the way of secret sauce.
by Barbing
2/26/2026 at 10:24:45 AM
by this argument Google will win though. Identical interface with similar quality answersby mi_lk
2/26/2026 at 10:26:32 AM
I wish it would be, but it's not. Gemini feels more sluggish, it's relatively overloaded with animations compared to chatgpt. Like most Google products.by sauercrowd
2/26/2026 at 12:29:01 PM
I've been testing Gemini as I code on Claude 4.6 and the answers aren't great for coding. ChatGPT has been better. But it did a good job with some personal IRA/401k planning.It feels like it's only a few months behind though.
by hparadiz
2/26/2026 at 12:41:04 PM
> Like most Google products.And yet Google has search monopoly, is part of mobile duopoly, has almost monopoly on e-mail and data storage, is strong player in office solutions, and owns the biggest entertainment platform in form of YT.
Seems like sluggishness and animations don't mean as much to normal people.
by wolvesechoes
2/26/2026 at 4:19:03 AM
Isn't half the appeal of AI that they can write a prompt like move all my text history from OpenAI to Claude and then they do it?by thrwaway55
2/26/2026 at 5:13:51 AM
But the (royal) Wife needs to 1) know that exporting is a concept, 2) automating an export is possible, 3) you could ask claude to do it, 4) what an API key is or how to connect services.My mum, and probably nearly a billion other users, could probably imagine step 1 but not connect to step 2 beyond copy-paste. Most people are still out here sending screen shots of their phones instead of just copying a link or hitting "share" on the image.
by GCUMstlyHarmls
2/26/2026 at 12:20:20 PM
It's way too easy to export your context for this to be real. I moved away from ChatGPT from Gemini months ago and haven't thought of it. Paid.by StevenNunez
2/26/2026 at 7:35:58 AM
Exactly. ChatGPT is ubiquitous for the new generation of AI (LLMs) for everyone outside our of bubble. I've spoken to dozens of friends and non-techncial folks about this topic over the last year and not a single one has ever said they use Gemini, Grok or Claude.OpenAI has by far the strongest brand and user base. It's not even close.
And, when it comes to the product they've been locked in the last few months it seems. The coding models are no longer behind Anthropic's and their general-use chat offering has always been up there at the top.
by deanc
2/26/2026 at 8:16:10 AM
Completely disagree with this take. I was an early free OpenAI user and switched to Gemini once it got good enough and bundled a bunch of services together to make the paid product free. OpenAI will need distribution to maintain any kind of durable market share. They need to become a bundler of other subs, or else they will just be the next Disney+ or Spotify that needs telecoms (Hah!) to push their paid product onto user's phone bills.by enos_feedler
2/26/2026 at 11:01:55 AM
At the conversation backlogs worth anything? To me they seem as valuable as Google search history. After maybe 3 days they are worthless.by Gigachad
2/26/2026 at 11:23:26 AM
People get attached to month long conversations, strangely. Sometimes even refusing to use the fork feature.And the memories are also something that adds to this greatly.
by Leynos
2/26/2026 at 11:31:36 AM
I guess if you treat it like a virtual boyfriend. Personally I found the memories to be an anti feature. I start chats to get a clean slate and test new ideas without previous ones polluting the chat.by Gigachad
2/26/2026 at 1:47:21 PM
i've been using chat gpt for 'chatting/questions' kind of things + snippets of codeit's plenty good on free tier
as soon as they start adding restrictions / raising prices / etc won't take long to look for alternatives
by PaywallBuster
2/26/2026 at 6:36:03 PM
I don't know. I switched to Gemini and haven't missed anything from OpenAI even for a second. I could switch back to OpenAI and not miss anything from Gemini. I don't feel the stickiness AT ALL.by outside1234
2/26/2026 at 6:02:10 AM
> but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere.But why would you want to?
You can just leave them there at slowly start new conversation on another platform.
by Mashimo
2/26/2026 at 7:24:57 AM
Conversations are not really a valuable service for these companies. The token usage is miniscule.Agentic development and claw style personal assistants are where the dough is at.
by tossandthrow
2/26/2026 at 8:36:33 AM
and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere.
by CamelCaseCondo
2/26/2026 at 1:31:50 PM
> Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue.Maybe you're overestimating their "moat" and stickiness. The dust is still settling on this madness and "OpenAI"[1] creates a lot of noise in the market.
These LLMs are being rapidly commoditized, very soon they will become as "boring" as virtual machines or containers. Altman has the exceptional skill to dupe people into giving their money to him. The "infinite money glitch" that he has been exploiting isn't really infinite.
I just hope there'll be a breakthrough with truly transparent LLMs that will stabilize this madness. As I've griped[2] two years ago, I find OpenAI too scummy, and it is unlikely that they will "win" with their sleazy ways.
[1] Air quotes because of their persistent abuse of the word "open"
by kashyapc
2/26/2026 at 7:47:44 AM
A good solution for memory would help with stickiness. But it's a hard thing to crack.by jpalomaki
2/26/2026 at 6:36:24 PM
This is what Netscape thought tooby outside1234
2/26/2026 at 6:22:11 PM
To the extent that it is a popularity contest, that's one thing.Of course the first thing people may look at is technologies going head-to-head.
Another big one is user pricing, plus the underlying cost to serve users. Actually minus that cost.
Biggest so far is capital.
Seems to be going that way, a contest of capital could dominate like so many other things regardless of technologies.
There are probably other things that companies may leverage if competition does really ramp up.
It may not have to be a moat to be a defining characteristic that some prefer.
by fuzzfactor
2/26/2026 at 3:41:38 AM
I commute on the train, I see students studying with it. I go for brunch on the weekend, I see parents consulting it while at the table with their infants. I'm at work, colleagues are using it all day. I leave work and I overhear the random woman smoking in the alleyway talking on her cellphone saying "so I asked chatgpt". It's mind-bogglingly pervasive, the last time something had such a seizmic cultural impact like this was I dunno, Facebook? And secondly, it's all one specific brand. I'm not encountering co-pilot or gemini in the meat-space.by morkalork
2/26/2026 at 3:57:05 AM
My sister uses Gemini and calls it chat gpt. It's becoming a genericide.by boxedemp
2/26/2026 at 5:17:05 AM
My aunt calls it "chat", "I asked chat", which is funny to my online-brain. Like she's a streamer with a permanent audience of 1. Hey chat, is this real?^1by GCUMstlyHarmls
2/26/2026 at 6:21:04 PM
OpenAIs investors can look forward to having an operating margin as impressive as the company that produces Band-Aidby swexbe
2/26/2026 at 4:08:53 AM
I still think it's hilarious that a product name as awful as "ChatGPT" has become so ubiquitous.I wonder what percentage of its users know what the GPT stands for, or even thought about it for a second?
by simonw
2/26/2026 at 4:33:06 AM
I mean, how is it any worse than 'google'?chatgpt is generic (as in, no prior meaning attached, except for the few people in the world who understand what GPT stands for). It's simple - even a non-english speaker can say it easily, and doesn't require one to be native to know how to pronounce it (this is a difficult concept for a native english speaker to grok).
These features makes for a good name.
by chii
2/26/2026 at 7:43:04 AM
It's very weird to pronounce it as a French. Either you pronounce it like in English with a thick French accent like "tchat' djee-pee-tee" or like in French as "tchat' jay-pey-tey" which sounds exactly like "I farted". This is really a terrible name in French.by rossant
2/26/2026 at 4:45:08 AM
"Google" at least doesn't have an acronym for "Generative pre-trained transformer" baked into it.by simonw
2/26/2026 at 6:07:21 AM
And many people don't know what Google stands for. Just like they probably didn't care what AOL stands for, or MSNby akkad33
2/26/2026 at 5:47:26 AM
Even you agreed that almost nobody knows what GPT stands for - which means it's as random as any other three letter acronyms.So i argue that chatGPT is indeed a good name (as good as google was).
by chii
2/26/2026 at 12:45:36 PM
Car brands are like that, does the average person know or care what GT, RX, STI, WRX etc mean?by morkalork
2/26/2026 at 5:54:54 PM
I think car names like that are awful too.(Clearly the car marketing world and the general public disagree with me there.)
by simonw
2/26/2026 at 8:11:35 AM
while we're talking pronunciation I'm on an (entirely pointless) one man mission to have "lemon" stick as a pronunciation of "LLM".by foo42
2/26/2026 at 5:00:49 AM
[dead]by wiredpancake
2/26/2026 at 4:03:59 AM
Chatgpt is like "Jeep". My grandmother calls every suv a jeep. But they're not all jeeps. AI looks like chatgpt, but people are driving all sorts of different AIs.I would guess OAI has no moat or stickiness beyond what governments and private companies will do to keep it afloat through equity and circular financing. Good enough AI is all most need, and they need it at the cheapest cost basis possible with the most convenient access.
Google will probably win on most of these fronts unless a coalition is formed to actively fight google at the business/government level. But, absent that, it will win out over oai and oai will probably bleed to death trying to become profitable.. whenever that happens. You'll likely see their talent and corresponding salaries shrink massively along this journey.
by SecretDreams
2/26/2026 at 4:59:53 AM
And if you're Boris Johnson, it's pronounced like 'jeep' too!by esafak
2/26/2026 at 3:50:42 AM
How many of those people are paying? I think many say “use ChatGPT” to mean any LLM. As you noted it seems you just see ChatGPT in the wild but that is anecdotal. It is certainly pervasive right now. But I know a lot of people currently switching to Gemini.I personally prefer claude models for all my work. If I were them I would be very worried. They are never giving us AGI and I am skeptical they are worth .5 trillion. Their cash burn is insane. Once ads and price hikes come, people will migrate to companies that can still afford to subsidize (like Google).
Plus I heard they lowered projections recently? Sam honestly comes off as a grifter.
by goolz
2/26/2026 at 4:09:49 AM
I'm very similar to the OP here, always hear about ChatGPT rarely anything else. Most people are definitely not paying, but of the few that are paying, outside of software developers, they are all paying for ChatGPT exclusively. I don't know of anyone paying for the basic chat versions of other AIs. A few developers paying for Claude and Gemini, but I know hundreds of people that talk of ChatGPT and no other AI, again most not paying though.by hattmall
2/26/2026 at 4:24:11 AM
Outside of work I don't know anyone who pays for AI.But I have noticed that everyone seems to be using ChatGPT as the generic term for AI. They will google something and then refer to the Gemini summary as "ChatGPT says...". I tried to find out what model/version one of my friends was using when he was talking about ChatGPT and it was "the free one that comes with Android"... So Gemini.
by chillfox
2/26/2026 at 4:11:10 AM
Gemini is nearly unusable thanks to “subsidies”. I honestly don’t see what the path is to these companies making any money short of massive price hikes, or electricity suddenly becoming free.by hyperbovine
2/26/2026 at 4:00:54 AM
Is it anecdotal? The observation isn't _my_ experience using it, or of _my friends_. I have no influence over who I see in public using it. I know it's not exactly a scientific study but it's still pretty damn good as a random sample. If I went outside and saw the sky was dark, cloudy and my face got wet, would you tell me it was anecdotal evidence when I say it's raining out?by morkalork
2/26/2026 at 5:31:34 AM
Only if you said it was raining everywhere these days.by BreakingProd
2/26/2026 at 3:59:22 AM
I actually encountered this today - one of a group I am planning a trip with posted some of the breathless nonsense that ChatGPT produced ("you're not picking a hotel, you're picking a group dynamic..." and other such textual diarrhea).It turned out the only reason ChatGPT was because it is free for small enough volume usage. My suggestion to see what Claude had to say instead was met with "huh, you have to pay for it?". It's not like these are people that can't afford $20 per month for a subscription, but it might be that these assistants aren't even worth that for typical "normie" use cases.
by jen20
2/26/2026 at 11:41:40 AM
I think that's false. The cost of switching is so low that the best product will win and there's no moat.I honestly can't see how OpenAI can possibly recoup the hundreds of billions poured into it at this point. I'd say AI assistants are no more sticky than browsers or search engines.
You might be tempted to say that Chrome or Google are sticky. But they're really not. A lot of people aren't old enough to remember the 90s when we had multiple search engines and people did switch. I know this goes against prevailing HN dogma but I'm sorry: Google is simply the best search engine. It doesn't have a magical hold on people. People aren't fooling themselves.
And Chrome? Before smartphones it was simply the better browser. Firefox used to have a much larger market share and Chrome ate their lunch. By being a better browser. Chrome was I think the first browser, or at least the first major browser, to do one process per tab. I still remember Firefox hanging my entire browser when something went wrong. I switched to Chrome in version 2 for that reason.
And now browsers are more sticky because of Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS. Safari really needs to be cross-platform, like seriously so. I know they briefly tried on Windows but they didn't really mean it.
Anyway, back to the point. I believe there's a certain amount of brand inertia but that's it. If Gemini dominates ChatGPT performance and UI/UX, people will switch so fast.
Google, Microsoft and Meta can survive the AI collapse. Apple is irrelevant (at least for now). OpenAI? Doomed IMHO.
by jmyeet
2/26/2026 at 10:07:20 AM
And?The tech landscape is littered with companies they had users who couldn’t monetize through ads. Beside the costs of serving request via LLMs is orders of magnitude greater than a search result.
On top of that, OpenAI is a sharecropper on other companies’ server, they depend on another company’s search engine and unlike Google, they are dependent on Nvidia.
Don’t forget that most browsing is done on the web and Google is the default search engine on almost every phone sold outside of China.
by raw_anon_1111
2/26/2026 at 8:25:17 AM
We are in the Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos etc. stage. Plenty of room for a Google still.by medi8r
2/26/2026 at 5:56:26 AM
I really like your analysis and agree up to a point.The problem with a moat in the consumer space is it depends on brand and marketing. OpenAI came into this world as a tech novelty, then an amazing tech tool, then a household name.
But… can they compete with massive consumer companies like Apple, Google, etc? In the long run?
There’s no technical reason they can’t. The question is whether they have consumer marketing in their blood. The space doesn’t have a lot of network effects, so it’s not like early Facebook where you had to be on it because everyone was.
Not saying they’ll fail, just saying it would be a significant challenge to be a hybrid frontier model / consumer product company.
by brookst
2/26/2026 at 3:50:33 PM
It's really easy to overcome that -- just sponsor some IndieDevs to flood the internet with scripts and tools to migrate all your conversations from OpenAI. Make it easy for people to switch using a simple process, make sure it's well distributed, and BOOM! Watch their user count drop like a rock. People act like just because a service has a lot of users it can't be destroyed. Anyone who has ever worked at a large web company can tell you otherwise. These things can be destroyed in a just a few days if they are targeted.They look like fortresses from the outside, but they are all incredibly vulnerable. That's the truth they don't want people to know or realize just how vulnerable they all are.
by iamleppert
2/26/2026 at 8:07:20 AM
Not sure how that works when there are fierce competitions, and openai's product is not substantially better than the rest. There are US competitors, then China.Take ozempic as an example. The word is already part of the culture, but the company is losing badly to lly. Novo nordisk is projecting revenue DECLINE while eli lilly is still growing massively. I am not even sure people know other glp1 drugs other than ozempic. I don't even remember lilly drugs name.
I think people should not underestimate the market. It's a dynamic game where engineering intuition might not be enough
by gloryjulio
2/26/2026 at 3:24:52 PM
> I think OpenAI has better chance to winning on the consumer side than everyone else.Which doesn't make money.
> Of course, would that much up against hundreds of billions of dollars in capex remains to be seen.
Most of that is a bet against enterprise adoption. Automation of customer service, sales, marketing, warehouses, medical discoveries, etc...
by re-thc
2/26/2026 at 1:20:29 PM
I disagree (imo).It would take me minutes to copy across a histories of projects and continue relatively unscathed by the experience.
I use chatGPT and currently relatively like it. But there is no moat beyond that.
Not like, for example, whatssap where it's almost impossible to detach from it due to the network ... (I've really tried with about a 10% success rate)
by LightBug1
2/26/2026 at 10:31:50 AM
Does she pay for it. No? Then she’s causing them a lossby MagicMoonlight
2/26/2026 at 10:03:56 AM
The problem with the stickiness is that they will eventually need to start charging, and that friction point will immediately make them come undone. Let’s says they charge $1.99 a month, and Anthropic then step in with a six month free offer, and suddenly everyone has two apps on their phone they’re comfortable with, and it’s a price war over very lightly differentiated productsby petesergeant
2/26/2026 at 9:29:27 AM
Having a known brand is not a moat mate. Sorry.myspace used to be a well known brand. I've worked there.
by ulfw
2/26/2026 at 9:28:07 AM
The problem is that, at least for now, it is dead easy to switch to something else. No need to convert anything, reconfigure anything, it is not like changing gmail to something else or dropping Word for LibreOffice.Chat window is a chat window.
I can imagine that sooner or later things like OpenClaw (or its alikes) will become more popular and that could be something that will catch users.
by piokoch
2/26/2026 at 9:12:51 AM
The difficulty is that “winning” in this case is setting up a monopoly or duopoly and slowly increasing prices. It’s not clear if OpenAI can get so far ahead of the competition that it becomes a two or one horse race. Right now Anthropic and Google are at least as good. And the open source models keep them all honest pricing wise.OpenAI will likely keep their billion users, and likely monetise them fairly effectively with ads. Their revenue will be considerable. It’s less clear that OpenAI will “win” and their competitors won’t.
by testdelacc1
2/26/2026 at 9:03:16 AM
I think you're overestimating stickiness. People spoke endlessly about stickiness of Google for years and years and it took what 18 months for Google search to become virtually irrelevant after LLMs came along?by mvdtnz
2/26/2026 at 11:46:56 AM
That being said: I used MySpace daily too... Until I didn't.by jdjdkkfjrjr
2/26/2026 at 7:14:23 AM
All of ChatGPT's users could be gone in a month if something better comes along. And plenty of other options are coming along.by leptons
2/26/2026 at 4:00:06 AM
How much is your wife paying for the privilege to use OAI presently?by SecretDreams
2/26/2026 at 4:08:38 AM
This is the real question. Is she willing to pay $20 per month when Google's Gemini is free? Google can remain irrational longer than OAI can remain solvent.by gadflyinyoureye
2/26/2026 at 4:31:24 AM
Google's profits have been going up while 'giving away gemini for free', so I don't think they're 'being irrational', they're unit economics apparently work.by casualscience
2/26/2026 at 4:12:27 AM
I understand the underlying quote but not how/why it’s being used here. How is Google giving Gemini away for free to undercut OAI irrational? Anticompetitive, maybe.by smugma
2/26/2026 at 5:10:13 AM
Because the quote is irrational/solvent so you have to stick with those words. The similarity is a failed attempt to wait out a disadvantageous price regardless of the specific reason driving said price.Even in the context of the original quote the price is only "irrational" in the eyes of the person trying (and failing) to play the market. "But you can't do that, that doesn't make any sense!" spoken by a person who has failed to fully grasp the situation.
by fc417fc802
2/26/2026 at 5:30:22 AM
It is just Google’s business model, and why OpenAI has to do ads better faster.But you can bet there was more economic foresight going on at Google than OpenAI.
by svnt
2/26/2026 at 4:16:14 AM
Agree. And we don't even know if they're bleeding out doing it. Google is on more efficient hardware and they fully control their ecosystem. And that ecosystem can feed into and be fed by their other ecosystems. OAI just has LLMs.by SecretDreams
2/26/2026 at 9:52:22 AM
Me and my gf do. Gemini is an absolute garbage and I’m willing to die on that hill.- Atrocious mobile application
- Gemini web somehow consumes GIGABYTES of memory doing absolutely NOTHING
- No projects
- UX is terrible (want to remove that a autogenerated diagram at the top? No button for you, fucker, good luck finding the conversation it belongs to)
- No shopping mode
- mobile application loses context mid conversation or when continuing from web/mobile
- model itself is a hot garbage, even the pro variants:
* Switches to Chinese mid sentence on a trivial topic (Python subprocessing)
* Uses Russian propaganda videos as a source
* Completely ignores instructions
* Default prompt is garbage and you constantly have to hand hold it to get proper answers
by wiseowise
2/26/2026 at 7:16:52 AM
OpenAI got me to cancel my anthropic sub for Codex. Anthropic weekly limits on Pro are atrocious. You listening anthropic?by computerex
2/26/2026 at 7:41:24 AM
nah, open ai doesn't have a moat it has a brief window to get a lot cheaper to run or it's going to go pop when someone figure out how to do inference a lot cheaper.by gonzo41
2/26/2026 at 5:57:49 AM
Microsoft is surviving precisely because of stickiness as you put it. But their users have to use them, and have to pay for it. There are very few people that use openai today that have to pay for it, those forced to use it are typically doing so via free avenues like windows copilot.OpenAI has the stickiness of MSN news or MS Teams. Your wife uses chatgpt on a daily basis but is she paying for it? If they charge her $0.99/mo will she not look at alternatives? If she gets two or three bad responses from chatgpt in a row, will she not explore alternatives to see if there is something better? Does she not use google? If she does, she is already interacting with gemini everyday via their AI overview.
OpenAI has a first-to-market advantage, not a moat as you think. they can absolutley dominate the market, if they stay on top of their game. Ebay was the main online shopping network, they had that advantage, they were even the ones that made Paypal a thing! But they're relatively little used now, better alternatives crushed them.
Amazon was the first-to-market with cloud services, they didn't get worse in any significant way, but their market share is not as great as it used to be, Azure has gained decent ground on them. 10 years ago the market share break down was 31/7/4, now it is 28/21/14 for AWS/Azure/GCP respectively.
For OpenAI to survive it needs most of the market share, if it gets only a 3rd for example, the AI industry on its own needs to be a $1T+ industry. Over the past 10 years revenue alone (not profit) for AWS has been $620B total and just made $128B in revenue (highest) last year. OpenAI needs to make in profits (not revenue) what AWS made last year in revenue by 2029 just to break even. If it manages to just break even by then, it needs to have more profits than the revenue AWS managed to attain after its entire lifetime until now. It's far easier to switch LLM models than cloud providers too!
Their only remote way of survival, I hate to say it, is by going the way of palantir and doing dirty things for governments and militaries. they need a cash-cow client that can't get anyone else like that. And even then, being US-based, I don't think outside the US any military is insane enough to use OpenAI at all due to geopolitics. Even in sectors like education, Google (via chromebooks) is more likely to form dependence than Microsoft via OpenAI since somehow they're more open to arbitrary apps due to historical anti-trust suits.
I can see a somewhat far-fetched argument being made for their survival, but only on thin-threads and excellent execution. But I can't see how they can actually survive competition. They're using the Azure strategy for market share, they're banking on AI being so ubiquitous that existing vendor-lock-in mindset will serve as a moat. They'll need to be much more profitable than AWS in like 1/5th of the time. Their product is comparable to (and literally is in Azure) one of many cloud service offerings, as oppose to an entire cloud provider, and their costs are huge similar to cloud providers like needing their own data-centers level huge, they need to overcome those costs, and on top of that have $125B> revenue in like 2 years!!
by notepad0x90
2/26/2026 at 6:03:24 AM
I have started using chatgpt for everything from financial planning to holiday planning to product purchase. Whenever I think I hit something useful I add it to memory. I'm a "go" plan user because they had a promotional offer that gave me free access to the plan for a year. Will I continue after one year? Truth is nothing I have in chatgpt cannot be recreated elsewhere. But if I care about keeping those memories I might. I think the real challenge for me now is finding back out conversations, it seems their history search is quite bad.by akkad33
2/26/2026 at 4:29:03 AM
Yup this is just another case of the HN bubble. I polled a bunch of non technical friends recently who I know use AI on a daily basis. Out of 10+ maybe 2 had ever heard of Claude, and no one had any interest in trying it.ChapGPT has become the AI verb, and in the consumer space it is not getting dethroned.
by paxys
2/26/2026 at 6:52:39 AM
Claude is definitely tech only.Gemini is the only real competitor to OpenAI in the consumer space: they already have the consumer eyes on their products and they have the financials to operate at a loss for years.
They are well positioned to fight for the market
by gbalduzzi