Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”
I remember I was at Microsoft more than a decade ago now and at the time there was a lot of concern about search and how far Bing lagged behind Google in geospatial (maps).<p>After some initial investment in the area I was at a presentation where one of the higher ups explained that they&#x27;d be abandoning their investment because Google Maps would inevitably fall behind crowdsourcing and OpenStreetMap.<p>Just like Encarta and Wikipedia we were told - once the open source community gets their hands on something there&#x27;s just no moat from an engineering perspective and once it&#x27;s crowdsourced there&#x27;s no moat from a data perspective.  You simply can&#x27;t compete.<p>Of course it&#x27;s more than a decade later now and I still use Google Maps, Bing Maps still suck, and the view times I&#x27;ve tried OpenStreetMaps I&#x27;ve found it far behind both.<p>What&#x27;s more every company I&#x27;ve worked at since has paid Google for access to their Maps API.<p>I guess the experience made me skeptical of people proclaiming that someone does or does not have a moat because the community will just eat away at any commercial product.