Comment by skeledrew
16 hours ago
> That is a lie. It's the excuse they are giving
Actually I came to that thought independently, then saw others saying the same. And you can't say it's a lie because you don't know how their backend works. I assume you know of prompt caching; that's one way to huge token savings, and works best with a cooperative client. I've also noticed that whenever I send an initial prompt to their web chat, the first message that pops up is the system trying to find skills that can handle the request. Who knows what skills they have available that can handle special cases and thus also contribute to savings, which also requires a cooperative client.
> some orthogonal product.
That's just your assumption. And if they really are "keeping the price artificially low", it's still to the benefit of users who don't mind the condition of using an official client. It's absolutely up to them how they run their business, as long as they aren't actually exploiting users in a market they've cornered (which they can't with all the providers out there).
> It's not sustainable
If not then eventually they'll up the price, or drop it and only offer the per token API. Until that hypothetical there will still be those who benefited from it while it was though. Nothing can change the fact that they've been offering users great value. It's kinda wild you're trying to detract from that even now, with 0 basis. Enjoy Ollama Cloud.
You have to pick a lane: either their backend is a commodity (interchangeable) or it's not.
> as long as they aren't actually exploiting users in a market they've cornered (which they can't with all the providers out there).
Price dumping and tie-in sales are business practices that destroy the market. They make it impossible for smaller players to compete. You don't get to feel exploited today, but you will get exploited in the end. But by then it will be too late.
> Nothing can change the fact that they've been offering users great value.
So was Über, so was AirBNB, so was every VC-funded company that followed the enshittification playbook. You have to be incredibly naive and/or short-sighted and/or selfish to keep condoning these practices.
Their models are accessed via their backend; the models are not the backend. Their backend is unique from a features perspective, while their models are unique by virtue of training data+technique.
> They make it impossible for smaller players to compete.
No they don't. Ollama is healthy, OpenRouter, and quite a few others. Then there are actual model makers such as DeepSeek, Google, Mistral, Zai, etc. The lists march on and nobody wanting access to LLMs is left in the cold. Somehow you're still trying to stick terms which just don't apply to the status quo. Unless you believe that Anthropic's offerings are so unique and critical to people's well-being that they should be treated as a public utility or something, which is laughable.
> So was Über, so was AirBNB
There is the option of not using them. But they actually have cornered a part of the market as well, even if that part is primarily comprised of well-to-do's ready to throw money to avoid the slightest inconvenience.