Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
a4isms | on: Anthropic IPO
Switching LLM providers as a company is not, once all your employees have it integrated with GitHub, their IDE, etc.

Speaking as someone who has been at professionally this since the 1980s, I suggest that while sometimes switching costs and network effects happen "organically," in this century businesses devote enormous amounts of attention to artificially building switching costs.

It's such a dirty practice that we have a four-letter word for it, a "moat." But of course, the moat isn't really to keep competitors out of a market, it's actually to keep customers trapped within it.

I fully expect every one of these AI providers to put as much work into trying to trap their customers within their ecosystem that they do to improve their capabilities.

tob_scott_a | parent | next
LLMs make it easier to bypass the moat, too. They can automate migrations, etc. pretty smoothly.

(Since we're talking about moats and cyber-feudalism, where does siege warfare come in?)

Lvl999Noob | root | parent
Since siege warfare is about bringing down the fortifications and a moat is part of those fortifications, cyber siege may be something akin to patent trolling or IP copyrights? Fire off dozens or hundreds of claims against your target and drown them in legal costs.
zobzu | parent
they haven't really done that so far. no offense but LLMs didn't exist in the 80. or 90. or 6y ago. and I'm just as old as you.
a4isms | root | parent
Then you have the experience to know that every land grab in technology so far has followed the same enshittification path: At first it's all about competing with other entrants to provide value and win customers. Then, inexorably, it shifts from winning customers to defending their turf. Then, inexorably, it shifts from protecting turf to maximizing extraction from their turf.

If you believe that this will be different, why not? But for now, I'm expecting this to go the same way. Yes, LLMs are something completely new. But also, the people behind them are exactly the same as the people behind every previous land grab.

mrdootdoot | root | parent
I can't wait for anthropics next big drop to be that it can order you a pizza, steering towards benign, token burning features that you didn't ask for and eye real-estate abuse for ads.

It's the end of an era. Lets pray open weight models give us a real choice soon.

In the meantime, Stonks up Anthropic. I'll always remember the good old days when you championed developers and changed what was possible.