ChatGPT has a phenomenal brand. That's worth 100x more than "product stickiness". They have 700 million weekly users and growing much faster than Google.
I think your points on Google being well positioned are apt for capitalization reasons, but only one company has consumer mindshare on "AI" and its the one with "ai" in its name.
Every one of them refers to using “ChatGPT” when talking about AI.
How likely is it to stay that way? No idea, but OpenAI has clearly captured a notable amount of mindshare in this new era.
But since buying a vacuum usually involves going to a store, looking at available devices, and paying for them, the value of a brand name is less significant.
It is the same with chatGPT.
Same here. I tried saying ‘I asked LLM’ or ‘I asked AI’ but that doesn’t sound right for me. So, in most conversations I say ‘I asked Chat GPT’ and in most of these situations, it feels like the exact provider does not matter, since essentially they are very similar in their nature.
Years old company growing faster than decades old company!
2.5 billion people use Gmail. I assume people check their mail (and, more importantly, receive mail) much more often than weekly.
ChatGPT has a lot of growing to do to catch up, even if it's faster
When I ask about which toaster is best, is it going to show me ads for a motorcycle because that's what I asked about last week?
My observation is different: ChatGPT may be well-known, but does not have a really good reputation anymore (I'd claim that it is in average of equal dubious reputation as Google) in particular in consideration of
- a lot of public statements and actions of Sam Altman (in particular his involvement into Worldcoin (iris scanning) makes him untolerable for being the CEO of a company that is concerned about its reputation)
- the attempts to overthrow Sam Altman's throne
- most people know that OpenAI at least in the past collaborated a lot with Microsoft (not a company that is well-regarded). But the really bad thing is that the A"I" features that Microsoft introduced into basically every product are hated by users. Since people know that these at least originated in ChatGPT products, this stained OpenAI's reputation a lot. Lesson: choose carefully who you collaborate with.
I bet at most 10 % of people in the West can name the CEO of OpenAI.
I can assure you that in Germany (where people are very sensitive with respect to privacy topics), Sam Altman (in particular because of his involvement with Worldcoin ("iris scanning" -> surveillance)) has a very bad reputation by many people.
But does that mean that all of the people who talk about "asking ChatGPT" are actually asking ChatGPT, from OpenAI?
How many of them are actually asking Claude? Or Gemini? Or some other LLM?
That's the trouble when your brand name gets genericized.
If by "phenomenal" you mean "the premier slop and spam provider", then yes.
It just turns out that the wider public loves peddling slop. (Not so much though when on the receiving end.)
I don't think majority of those 700m people use the product because of the brand. Products are a non-trivial contributor to the brand.
Also, if it were phenomenal, they wouldn't be called ClosedAI ;)
