241–250 of 414 posts
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In and Out Burger is an even bigger monopoly, the way they organize themselves is unfair to the rest of their competition.
They control the In and the Out? What other options does the competition have?
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> Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That's why Apple used open-source software to build a kernel. And why they used third party developers to develop the ecosystem of applications.
> And why they used third party developers to develop the ecosystem of applications. Isn't that the very definition of a platform?
Apparently, everyone is building the platform all the time, even when it’s just a user facing application
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> Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. Ahistoric jibber jabber. Microsoft gave it their very best shot with Windows Phone. Facebook renamed the entire company to make VR happen. These companies have shoved everything they got into making these platforms, and their fate would not have been different if they had been given another billion. Platforms are hard to make, an…
Fair enough, but I'd point out that, unlike Second Life, Meta didn't buy pants. If you want a chronicle of wasted spending regarding Microsoft and mobile devices, Google "Tomi Ahonen."
Also wasted spending is not quite the same as "not wanting to spend" -- it's more, to GP's point, "spending a lot unsuccessfully." I got the sense a lot of the friction Nokia and Windows Phone faced were due to Google (and to some extent Apple) using the market dominance of their properties (Android, YouTube, Search, Maps) to suppress competition.
I suppose it's fair play for what MSFT did in the OS and browser wars, but they got dinged pretty hard by Antitrust and played nice for a decade+ after that. Google is starting to see the antitrust blowback for it's actions only now, long after the competition has been crushed.
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AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. This week ChatGPT, next week Claude. The real value is and going to be in hardware - as long as China doesn't enter the GPU/RAM race. I increasingly see AI investment, generally speaking, as a lost cause. It has very little chance to pay off.
> AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. That might be true in tech-savvy industries -- but in non-tech industries where the biggest software purchase might be the office suite or the ERP, inertia means the GSuite shops stick with Gemini, and the Exchange/Office 365 shops stick with Copilot.
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“ Or maybe it was a loose ethical environment in general” Altman doesn’t appear to be a beacon of corporate ethics. There has to be a reason why almost every single important partnership OpenAI had, abruptly ended, except for maybe Nvidia. Just recently Satya Nadella publicly implied that OpenAI should not be trusted. They are slowly becoming the STD of the AI industry, it’s like they think they are too big and aweso…
"Altman doesn’t appear to be a beacon of corporate ethics." Do those exist? I'm usually happy to see a mild candle flicker in the ethics window.
Similar to the music world, the better you are, usually the more obscure you are as well. (e.g., Allan Holdsworth is a name known to most pros but the average Jack or Jill have no idea who he is or why he's considered important.)
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AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. This week ChatGPT, next week Claude. The real value is and going to be in hardware - as long as China doesn't enter the GPU/RAM race. I increasingly see AI investment, generally speaking, as a lost cause. It has very little chance to pay off.
> AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. That might be true in tech-savvy industries -- but in non-tech industries where the biggest software purchase might be the office suite or the ERP, inertia means the GSuite shops stick with Gemini, and the Exchange/Office 365 shops stick with Copilot.
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Oh the irony if Apple can get a larger OpenAI stake than Microsoft.
I don’t think Cupertino will settle for stock. I think they’ll demand cash and an agreement that OpenAI abandon or reboot their hardware project. In the meantime, Apple gets an open kimono into everything OpenAI has planned. This could actually be the fuckup that kills OpenAI as an independent company. The threat of a cash judgement gums up not only an IPO, but also debt-based fundraising. (We equity guys are idiots,…
This could go way beyond any potential hardware project, depending on whats actually true from the allegations and how much of Apple's trade secrets have been used or shared within OpenAI.
There were rumors a while back of OpenAI building some integrations into macOS akin to the Shortcuts app, and who knows what other computer use type projects. They could very well have been using information from within Apple for that.
It's kind of a fruit of a poisonous tree problem. If OpenAI used any of Apple's secrets broadly, Apple could ask the court for an injunction to block the deployment of any software from OpenAI. If discovery proves the IP contamination spread into other areas within OpenAI, it could completely freeze all of their deployments.
If Apple actually has the receipts here they could realistically bring down OpenAI entirely.
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> AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. That might be true in tech-savvy industries -- but in non-tech industries where the biggest software purchase might be the office suite or the ERP, inertia means the GSuite shops stick with Gemini, and the Exchange/Office 365 shops stick with Copilot.
I tend to agree with this sentiment. I'm not in the tech sector. As an outsider, it seems to me that OpenAI and Anthropic are chasing government and the defense industry as their main clients. Google and Microsoft are chasing business clients and educational institutions. Amazon and Apple are chasing consumers.
Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That includes things like Windows Phone, Fire Phone, all the glasses, Humane, etc. As much as everybody hates on OpenAI for chaotic management, they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them. Even though it probably only buys them a 20% chance of success, they haven't doomed the…
As far as I can tell Ive's expertise isn't "build a platform". All they seem to have gotten out of it is some creepy blogpost: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/