You need to adjust this figure for inflation. Microsoft became huge decades ago when money was worth more.
It’s not being on the Internet that’s giving me AI fatigue. My employer is forcing me to use it. It’s being used at the drive-thru window even. “Touch grass” isn’t a valid argument here.
This idea that AI will improve after the AI companies’ inevitable exits is one that isn’t backed by history. I’d like to have one exited unicorn company named that has a better value and/or lower cost now than its pre-exit state. YouTube? Netflix? Facebook? Uber? MongoDB? Atlassian? Slack?
It is legitimately hard to find a tech company that is a more desirable company to patronize post-exit than pre-exit.
We are so obviously in the customer acquisition phase of AI…people in this thread are talking about spending hundreds per month on AI services and I think all of those will double in price soon after large private company players like OpenAI go public or get acquired. It happened with Netflix, it happened with YouTube (more ads, YouTube Premium), it happened with Uber, the list goes on and on.