> I think people who kept saying there is no moat in AI is about to be shocked at how strong of a moat there actually is for ChatGPT
Given one can (at least for the moment) export one's entire chat history from ChatGPT, what exactly would stop a ChatGPT user from switching to an alternative if the alternative is either better, or better value?
People are being weird about this. ChatGPT has no moat because switching costs are zero. There's no investment into a particular AI service.
ChatGPT has mindshare but that's not the same as it being a moat. The fact that people will continue to use ChatGPT after some gentle frog boiling is true of any service. Adding ads is going to be a measure of how real people tolerate ads more than anything about ChatGPT. Normal people really don't care that much and it bothers me—and probably most of HN.
The answer is friction. What % of this billion of users will bother to export their chat history (which is already a lot) and import another another llm. That number is too small to matter.
How many of those care about their own particular history in the first place and what % of those at least actively manage it outside of standard chat interface or even hop providers? I think that % would surprise you.
All chat apps look exactly the same and have exactly the same features. The friction is basically non-existent compared to email services, social media, web browsers, &c.
I think it matters to more than you might think. A significant portion of the non-technical ChatGPT userbase get really attached to the model flavor.
The GPT-4o controversy is a good example. People got attached to 4o's emotional and enthusiastic response style. When GPT-5--which was much more terse and practical--rolled out, people got really upset because they were treating ChatGPT as a confident and friend, and were upset when it's personality changed.
In my experience, Gemini and Claude are much more helpful and terse than ChatGPT with less conversational padding. I can imagine that the people who value that conversational padding would have a similar reaction to Gemini or Claude as they did to GPT-5.
Yet, somehow I've been paying $20/month to ChatGPT for years now and I don't use Claude or Gemini even when they're free or have slightly better models.
Try telling your PM that you want to ignore Safari when you create your website with 60%+ of mobile users in the US using iPhones and globally your most affluent users are on iPhones. Even if they download Chrome for iOS, they are still using WebKit.
Not having used anything except for Firefox, I don't have any experience with migrating to different browsers. However, my understanding is that Chrome shows a little pop-up that lets you import from previous browsers rather than relying on the user to do a data export. Correct me if I'm wrong about this.
I suspect that Claude couldn't make an "import from ChatGPT" button because OpenAI would make it difficult, so they'd have to rely on user initiative and technical capability (exporting to JSON and importing from JSON is enough technical friction that the average user won't bother).
You are vastly overestimating people's willingness to deal with bullshit, when the product does not have a real lock in.
It would be incredibly easy to have a company offering their ChatGPT over WhatsApp or iMessage, and get people to start using it instead of an ad-ridden GPT app.
Given one can (at least for the moment) export one's entire chat history from ChatGPT, what exactly would stop a ChatGPT user from switching to an alternative if the alternative is either better, or better value?