Comment by ben_w

> How is that not a network?

A network effect is ~ "I must use this specifically because the people I am connected to, socially or professionally, also use this".

I can trivially replace OpenAI's ChatGPT with DeepSeek or Anthropic's Claude, and indeed often do so.

For any of these providers to benefit from a network effect, it has to do to LLMs what Microsoft did to spreadsheets with Office. I think one of these businesses may well be able to, but so far, none have.