Netflix had all the paid TV channels worldwide, physical media sales and video-clubs as competitors. Uber had (still has) taxis. All of these were entrenched competitors with strong moats.

It's easy with hindsight to underestimate the forces of Netflix's competitors, but consider that even today, the revenue of Pay TV worldwide is still bigger that the revenue of streaming platforms. And unlike streaming platforms, Pay TV make profits hand over fist and didn't incur crazy debts to gain marketshare. They may be on the way to extinction, but they'll make tons of profits on their way out.

Netflix and Uber both created new product categories in their respective markets. And both where quite established before there was any real competition in those product categories.

Netflix discovered that content was the only moat available to them, after which it was effectively inevitable that they become a major production studio. I think Uber are still trying to figure out their most, but ironically regulation is probably part of it.

OpenAI also created a new product category, but the competition was very quick to move into that category and has very deep pockets. At some point, they clearly felt regulation might be a moat but it’s hard to see them landing that and winning.

> I don't think Netflix and Uber had even a fraction of the competition that this field will have.

Uber had significantly more competition than all of these companies combined. Including from China which they were forced out of.

I think the simplified question is if OpenAI is a natural monopoly like Google was/is or if that market has a different structure like an oligopoly (e.g. mobile phone market), "perfect" market, etc. On the technological side it seems obvious (does it?) that we can run good models ourselves or in the cloud. What is less clear if there will be a few brands that will offer you a great UX/UI, and the last mile wins.

They totally did in their own ways. Blockbuster. YouTube. Taxis. Google self driving