It's interesting to contrast this take with the opinions expressed on an earlier thread about OpenAI's moat (or lack thereof).

Several people pointed to Google Search as an example of "user count as moat", and an explanation of its continued dominance despite a results page dominated by "sponsored" results.

Presumably the same reasoning would apply here.

Assuming chatgpt has moat, what kind of moat would apply that it is so crucial that it won't allow people to move away from it?

OP's point is the same can be said about Google (search).

the value add of google search is just not that high that people are willing to pay for it.

whereas its different for llm's. same as for youtube, netflix and spotify.

I agree with your assessment, but given the past behaviour of this administration I wouldn't be shocked to discover that the real reason is "petulance".

It’s obvious retaliation, and will be struck down by the courts.

Maybe, within the next 5 years.

It's almost like the democratically elected Congress gets to decide the name, not the President!

(Spoiler: it's still legally called the Gulf of America)

I responded to another comment in this thread with the details, but in summary, no.

See this previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708678

This is false.

Kagi had a post discussing this which made the front page of HN about a month ago [1]:

> Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi’s ad-free subscription model.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708678

Some very dodgy wording here.

> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results (SERP meaning search engine results page). These providers serve major enterprises (according to their websites) including Nvidia, Adobe, Samsung, Stanford, DeepMind, Uber, and the United Nations.

> This is not our preferred solution. We plan to exit it as soon as direct, contractual access becomes available. There is no legitimate, paid path to comprehensive Google or Bing results for a company like Kagi. Our position is clear: open the search index, make it available on FRAND terms, and enable rapid innovation in the marketplace.

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-google.html

For the purposes of the discussion at hand, yes some results do ultimately come from Google, just via third-party SERP providers rather than Kagi paying Google for access since Google doesn't offer their own public API (and neither does Bing anymore).

Not GP, and not saying I agree with them, but it may be worth remembering that Netscape had 90% market share at one point. Active user count may not be the moat you imagine.

Adoption of web browsers was also much lower when Netscape was dominant. 90% marketshare is less meaningful if you're only 1% of the way to the potential market size. Peeling away users who talk to ChatGPT every day is very possible, but harder than getting someone whose never used an LLM before (but does use your OS, browser, phone...) to try yours first.

I think the even better analogy than browsers is search engines. There aren't any network effects or platform lock-in, but there is potential for a data flywheel, building a brand, and just getting users in the habit of using you. The results won't necessarily turn out the same - I think OpenAI's edge on results quality is a lot less than early Google over its competitors - but the shape of the competition is similar.

Switching is super easy and people are doing it.

There is no moat

Maybe! Switching search engines is also very easy, and the top story on the front page is someone no longer using Google, but we know in practice almost nobody does that. As technologists we're much more likely to switch and know people who would switch.

Same strategy as for search. Gemini is going be shoveled down the mouth of users and they just won't change the default.

On iOS with the Apple agreement, and on Android (though the question of hardware remains when considering beyond Pixel phones).

But that doesn't translate to paying Gemini customers

Interesting you make that comment so confidently

google search definitely has a moat. people build their websites to optimize for google's algorithm, therefore google users see better results -> google gets more users -> websites optimize for google -> repeat. Personally I never bother with 'bing SEO' or 'bing ppc ads'.

Google backfilled their moat with sponsored results and crappy AI summaries

the AI has gotten good enough that click-thru-rate on informational searches has fallen off a cliff. I have some blog posts for SEO, their CTR is like 0.1% now.

google search took over becuse all search engines sucked and theirs didn't in a few important ways. AND by default, ads over to the side, clean interface.

Now all search engines suck and google's sucks just as bad or worse than the rest.

If someone were to follow the original google playbook and make a search engine that helped people find things (eg by respecting the query syntax rather than making 'helpful' suggestions and dropping words the user included in their query) and kept the ads separate and out of the way of results. They might well make a monster. But this is old tech so nobody cares and everyone thinks google is unassailble even while nobody likes them anymore. Is there /any/ money in search? I thought so but I must be wrong for it to get this bad.

Google search still has at least one competitive advantage: their crawlers are least likely to be blocked so they have the biggest index. AFAIK reddit is indexed by google but blocks all other search crawlers.

Kagi works quite well.

> If wealth is sufficiently concentrated - the value of anything becomes tied to the whims of the few who can transact at that level.

You just described a capitalist system: a system built and controlled by and for those who control the capital.

> anyone is allowed to participate in capital formation and accumulation

In the same sense that nobody is allowed to sleep under a bridge.

I don't follow. Even now there is nothing preventing anyone here from making something for millions of dollars. While VC capital is closed to a select few, a person in a garage can still make it big.

Communist counties tend to gate keep even more. To the point that it is entirely who you know, with little concern to what you do.

> Even now there is nothing preventing anyone here from making something for millions of dollars.

Any one person might. But the system is setup such that's it's almost impossible for everyone to do well.

> Communist counties tend to gate keep even more. To the point that it is entirely who you know, with little concern to what you do.

And in capitalist countries, it's how much money you have. Swings and roundabouts.

> But the mechanism of power differs: In centrally planned systems, control flows from political authority. In market systems, control flows from voluntary transactions and competitive success.

This is a boilerplate theoretical explanation of capitalism which bears very little resemblance to how things actually work in most Western capitalist societies, particularly America.

A cursory glance at the majority of large markets reveals that they are dominated by a handful of massive companies, who use their enormous wealth and influence to steer (centrally planned) political policies, thereby stymying competition and entrenching their position.

> Same as any other economic system

Only if you limit yourself "capitalism" and "communism" as the two economic systems you are are considering. What we should be doing is noticing that these two systems fail in very similar ways (concentration of power in a small group of people), and think about what kind of system might not fail in that way.

How is this evidence of AI use?

> That’s it. No magic prompts, no elaborate system instructions, no clever hacks. Just a disciplined pipeline that separates thinking from typing.

That is a perfectly normal sentence, indistinguishable from one I might write myself. I am not an AI.

It’s not X it’s Y is one of the most obvious LLM writing patterns. Especially the heavily punctuated sentence structure.

This is a big giveaway because ai tends to overuse this same structure to "conclude"

As do humans, who produced all of the work on which AI was trained.

If an AI favours a particular sentence structure or turn of phrase, it's probably because humans favour it.

I came across this yesterday. Haven't tried it, but it looks interesting:

https://agent-relay.com/

I'm not sure I agree with the "bloated" description, but I will say that I really like Elixir, and really dislike LiveView. Which is a shame, because the latter is pretty inescapable in Elixir world these days.