I had been loyal, but am not any longer, so the ploy definitely did not work with me. I guess I'll move on to Gemini now, until I get sick of it.
To the degree there is a moat, I do not think it will be effective at keeping people in. I had already been somewhat disillusioned with the AI hype, but now I am also disillusioned with the company who I thought was the best actor in the space. I am happy that there is unlikely to be a dominant single winner like there was for web search or for operating systems. That is, unless there's a significant technological jump, rather than the same gradual improvement that all the AI companies are making.
I am loyal to my family and friends, business partners, and to those who I believe are fighting the good fight, as long as they continue the good fight. I do not consider myself a henchmen to any of them.
Loyalty is a conflict resolution tool. But when my relationships are such that nobody is pursuing contradictory goals to begin with, I find that it doesn't come up hardly at all.
On the rare occasion that it does, I try to circle back and mitigate the root cause so that I can resume a loyalty-free life thereafter.
> I had already been somewhat disillusioned with the AI hype, but now I am also disillusioned with the company
Likewise: a faulty, unproven, hallucinating, error-prone service, however good, was a good value at approx 25 USD/month in an "absolutely all you can eat", wholesale regime ...
... now? Reputational risk aside, they force their users to appraise their offering in terms of actual value offered, in the market.-
To the degree there is a moat, I do not think it will be effective at keeping people in. I had already been somewhat disillusioned with the AI hype, but now I am also disillusioned with the company who I thought was the best actor in the space. I am happy that there is unlikely to be a dominant single winner like there was for web search or for operating systems. That is, unless there's a significant technological jump, rather than the same gradual improvement that all the AI companies are making.