News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on I don't want to spend my one precious life dealing with Google's AI search. Parent comment

Re:I don't want to spend my one precious life dealing with G... by thegrimmest on Thursday May 16, 2024 @03:37PM (#40382264)
Doesn't this just mean that the vast majority of users don't care enough about these sorts of things? Doesn't that mean that the market is working?

If switching cost > perceived benefit why should we expect anything other than status quo? When a truly innovative platform that offers benefit > switching cost, users will naturally flock to it. We're already starting to see that with ChatGPT.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I don't want to spend my one precious life dealing with G... by MereInterest on Thursday May 16, 2024 @07:13PM (#40384461)
> Doesn't this just mean that the vast majority of users don't care enough about these sorts of things? Doesn't that mean that the market is working?

No. Network effects mean that there's not only a high cost of switching away from the largest network, but there's a high cost to use anything other than the largest network. When that bias exists, you cannot infer any preferences from market outcomes.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I don't want to spend my one precious life dealing with G... by thegrimmest on Friday May 17, 2024 @09:48AM (#40389824)
OK so innovators have to provide an option where:

benefit > switching cost + network cost

This has repeatedly been demonstrated as large networks have been disrupted. Folks switched away from MSN Messenger and MySpace didn't they?

[ Parent | on HN ]