[pi-err]

Sounds a lot like "Google+ will catch Facebook in no time".

OpenAI has been on a winning streak that makes ChatGPT the default chatbot for most of the planet.

Everybody else like you describe is trying to add some AI crap behind a button on a congested UI.

B2B market will stay open but OpenAI has certainly not peaked yet.

[no_wizard]

Facebook had immense network effects working for it back then.

What network effect does OpenAI have? Far as I can tell, moving from OpenAI to Gemini or something else is easy. It’s not sticky at all. There’s no “my friends are primarily using OpenAI so I am too” or anything like that.

So again, I ask, what makes it sticky?

[miki123211]

OpenAI (or, more specifically, Chat GPT) is CocaCola, not Facebook.

They have the brand recognition and consumer goodwill no other brand in AI has, incredibly so with school students, who will soon go into the professional world and bring that goodwill with them.

I think better models are enough to dethrone OpenAI in API, B2C and internal enterprise use cases, but OpenAI has consumer mindshare, and they're going to be the king of chatbots forever. Unless somebody else figures out something which is better by orders of magnitude and that Open AI can't copy quickly, it's going to stay that way.

Apple had the opportunity to do something really great here. With Siri's deep device integration on one hand and Apple's willingness to force 3rd-party devs to do the right thing for users on the other, they could have had a compelling product that nobody else could copy, but it seems like they're not willing to go that route, mostly for privacy, antitrust and internal competency reasons, in that order. Google is on the right track and might get something similar (although not as polished as typical Apple) done, but Android's mindshare among tech-savvy consumers isn't great enough for it to get traction.

[cshimmin]

Yep, I mostly interact with these AIs through Cursor. When I want to ask it a question, there's a little dropdown box and I can select openai/anthropic/deepseek whatever model. It's as easy as that to switch.

[rileyphone]

From talking to people, the average user relies on memories and chat history, which is not easy to migrate. I imagine that's the part of the strategy to keep people from hopping model providers.

[jwarden]

Brand counts for a lot

[NBJack]

Defacto victory.

Facebook wasn't some startup when Google+ entered the scene; they were already cash flow positive, and had roughly 30% ads market share.

OpenAI is still operating at a loss despite having 50+% of the chatbot "market". There is no easy path to victory for them here.

[kranke155]

Facebook couldnt be overtaken because of network effects. What network effects are there to a chatbot.

If you look at Gemini, I know people using it daily.

[chrisweekly]

IMHO "ChatGPT the default chatbot" is a meaningful but unstable first-mover advantage. The way things are apparently headed, it seems less like Google+ chasing FB, more like Chrome eating IE + NN's lunch.

[jameslk]

OpenAI is a relatively unknown company outside of the tech bubble. I told my own mom to install Gemini on her phone because she's heard of Google and is more likely going to trust Google with whatever info she dumps into a chat. I can’t think of a reason she would be compelled to use ChatGPT instead.

Consumer brand companies such as Coca Cola and Pepsi spend millions on brand awareness advertising just to be the “default” in everyone’s heads. When there’s not much consequence choosing one option over another, the one you’ve heard of is all that matters

[ricardobeat]

I know a single person who uses ChatGPT daily, and only because their company has an enterprise subscription.

My impression is that Claude is a lot more popular – and it’s the one I use myself, though as someone else said the vast majority of people, even in software engineering, don’t use AI often at all.

[JumpCrisscross]

> OpenAI has been on a winning streak that makes ChatGPT the default chatbot for most of the planet

OpenAI has like 10 to 20% market share [1][2]. They're also an American company whose CEO got on stage with an increasingly-hated world leader. There is no universe in which they keep equal access to the world's largest economies.

[1] https://iot-analytics.com/leading-generative-ai-companies/

[2] https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/stats/openai-statistics....

[mtrovo]

Not sure if Google+ is a good analogy, it reminds me more of the Netscape vs IE fight. Netscape sprinted like it was going to dominate the early internet era and it worked until Microsoft bundled IE with Windows for free.

LLMs themselves aren't the moat, product integration is. Google, Apple and Microsoft already have the huge user bases and platforms with a big surface area covering a good chunk of our daily life, that's why I think they're better positioned if models become a commodity. OpenAI has the lead now, but distribution is way more powerful in the long run.

[_Algernon_]

Social media has the benefit of network effects which is a pretty formidable moat.

This moat is non-existent when it comes to Open AI.

[alganet]

That reminds me of the Dictator movie.

All dissidents went into Little Wadyia.

When the Dictator himself visited it, he started to fake his name by copying the signs and names he saw on the walls. Everyone knew what he was.

Internet social networks are like that.

Now, this moat thing. That's hilarious.

[Analemma_]

That's not at all the same thing: social media has network effects that keep people locked in because their friends are there. Meanwhile, most of the people I know using LLMs cancel and resubscribe to Chat-GPT, Claude and Gemini constantly based on whatever has the most buzz that month. There's no lock-in whatsoever in this market, which means they compete on quality, and the general consensus is that Gemini 2.5 is currently winning that war. Of course that won't be true forever, but the point is that OpenAI isn't running away with it anymore.

And nobody's saying OpenAI will go bankrupt, they'll certainly continue to be a huge player in this space. But their astronomical valuation was based on the initial impression that they were the only game in town, and it will come down now that that's no longer true. Hence why Altman wants to cash out ASAP.

[kortilla]

Most of the planet doesn’t use chat bots at all.

[jjani]

The comparison of Chrome and IE is much more apt, IMO, because the deciding factor as other mentioned for social media is network effects, or next-gen dopamine algorithms (TikTok). And that's unique to them.

For example, I'd never suggest that e.g. MS could take on TikTok, despite all the levers they can pull, and being worth magnitudes more. No chance.

[paulddraper]

Facebook fundamentally had network effects.

[jay_kyburz]

Google+ absolutely would have won, and it was clear to me that somebody at Google decided they didn't want to be in the business of social networking. It was killed deliberately, it didn't just peter out.