Comment by mike_hearn
Comment by mike_hearn 6 hours ago
Well, web search is also function(query: String): String in a sense, and that has one heck of a moat.
Comment by mike_hearn 6 hours ago
Well, web search is also function(query: String): String in a sense, and that has one heck of a moat.
Right, because just like the Amazon case, potential competitors didn't realize at the time what a threat it was, and so they gave Google a 15-year head start (Microsoft half-heartedly made "Live Search" circa 2007 and didn't really get at all serious about Bing until ~2010).
That's very different from the world where everyone immediately realized what a threat Chat-GPT was and instantly began pouring billions into competitor products; if that had happened with search+adtech in 1998, I think Google would have had no moat and search would've been a commoditized "function (query: String): String" service.