Source: Toby Daniels
Generative AI tools have shifted from research curiosities to casual utility products accessed through browsers, competing on speed and convenience rather than capability breakthroughs. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and dozens of startups are racing to become interchangeable, which compresses margins and accelerates the hunt for defensible applications: vertical software, enterprise workflows, hardware integration. Web browsers, email, and search followed the same trajectory from magical to mundane—the winners were rarely the ones who perfected the core technology.