A high rate of customer acquisition isn’t the same thing as a network effect.
OpenAI has some network effects baked into its product suite, but it’s not even in the same league as Microsoft’s bundling strategy (setting aside Google for a moment). Microsoft’s history is littered with competitors who had a better product, a faster adopted product, who were snuffed because of Microsoft’s superior distribution capabilities.
I’m on the train at the moment, but the big exception is the mobile market, and in hindsight that makes perfect sense - most of the phone market consumer grade, where bundling productivity software isn’t much of a value proposition.
It’s far more likely that OpenAI remain where they are on the value chain, because it’s easier to capture and integrate AI startups into their products. If they were to compete on productivity software, they need to differentiate with entirely new modalities of AI-informed user interfaces, or they will be yet another slightly better program that got blown out of the water by MSFT enterprise distribution
edit: to be clear my point is, why would you become a bit player in an established market when you can dominate a new market you created yourself?
OpenAI has some network effects baked into its product suite, but it’s not even in the same league as Microsoft’s bundling strategy (setting aside Google for a moment). Microsoft’s history is littered with competitors who had a better product, a faster adopted product, who were snuffed because of Microsoft’s superior distribution capabilities.
I’m on the train at the moment, but the big exception is the mobile market, and in hindsight that makes perfect sense - most of the phone market consumer grade, where bundling productivity software isn’t much of a value proposition.
It’s far more likely that OpenAI remain where they are on the value chain, because it’s easier to capture and integrate AI startups into their products. If they were to compete on productivity software, they need to differentiate with entirely new modalities of AI-informed user interfaces, or they will be yet another slightly better program that got blown out of the water by MSFT enterprise distribution
edit: to be clear my point is, why would you become a bit player in an established market when you can dominate a new market you created yourself?