I think your take is completely reasonable but I think the ‘first to 100 million users’ is actually noteworthy because if they can become entrenched and people become unwilling to learn anything else, they’ve won and can charge nearly whatever the fuck they want (at least in the medium term). See Microsoft and Adobe. They charge whatever they want for their subscription programs because what else are you going to do, use GIMP? Even in situations where the FLOSS alternative is legitimately good, a lot of people will still refuse to switch. I don’t think Anthropic can survive long enough for them to become the only thing Susan from HR knows or is willing to use, but I think there’s a path to profit somewhere here.
Except Microsoft and Adobe never bankrupted a company by getting adopted. It was a tax that companies could afford since they were still rounding errors compared to labor.
If the adoption of a tech can be measured as being roughly equal to higher than the labor expense of a company, that decision isn’t going to be dictated by what Susan in HR knows.
I think your take is completely reasonable but I think the ‘first to 100 million users’ is actually noteworthy because if they can become entrenched and people become unwilling to learn anything else, they’ve won and can charge nearly whatever the fuck they want (at least in the medium term). See Microsoft and Adobe. They charge whatever they want for their subscription programs because what else are you going to do, use GIMP? Even in situations where the FLOSS alternative is legitimately good, a lot of people will still refuse to switch. I don’t think Anthropic can survive long enough for them to become the only thing Susan from HR knows or is willing to use, but I think there’s a path to profit somewhere here.
There’s nothing to “learn”. Using one of these is in no way different than using the other.
Unless you start using fancy little features that let you do things the others don’t do quite as well.
Except Microsoft and Adobe never bankrupted a company by getting adopted. It was a tax that companies could afford since they were still rounding errors compared to labor.
If the adoption of a tech can be measured as being roughly equal to higher than the labor expense of a company, that decision isn’t going to be dictated by what Susan in HR knows.