Comment by mlinsey
2 days ago
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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