According to Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory, OpenAI's real moat is its 800 million users, not its technology. By monetizing only through subscriptions instead of ads, OpenAI fails to maximize user engagement and data capture, leaving the door open for Google's resource-heavy, ad-native approach to win.

While competitors focus on subscription models for their AI tools, Google's primary strategy is to leverage its core advertising business. By integrating sponsored results into its AI-powered search summaries, Google is the first to turn on an ad-based revenue model for generative AI at scale, posing a significant threat to subscription-reliant players like OpenAI.

While other AI companies are hesitant, Google is expected to lead LLM ad integration. As a company built on ads, it is culturally positioned to implement monetization quickly and effectively, unlike competitors that may view ads as a necessary evil rather than a core competency.

While OpenAI has strong brand recognition with ChatGPT, it's strategically vulnerable. Giants like Google and Microsoft can embed superior or equivalent AI into existing products with massive user bases and established monetization channels. OpenAI lacks these, making its long-term dominance questionable as technical differentiation erodes.

Google is deliberately holding back on integrating ads into its Gemini app. This strategy allows them to leverage their financial strength, let OpenAI absorb the user backlash and make early mistakes, and then copy successful ad formats later with the advantage of their superior data.

Ben Thompson's analysis suggests OpenAI is in a precarious position. By aggregating massive user demand but avoiding the optimal aggregator business model (advertising), it weakens its defense against Google, which can leverage its immense, ad-funded structural advantages in compute, data, and R&D to overwhelm OpenAI.

As competitors like Google's Gemini close the quality gap with ChatGPT, OpenAI loses its unique product advantage. This commoditization will force them to adopt advertising sooner than planned to sustain their massive operational costs and offer a competitive free product, despite claims of pausing such efforts.

Google can dedicate nearly all its resources to AI product development because its core business handles infrastructure and funding. In contrast, OpenAI must constantly focus on fundraising and infrastructure build-out. This mirrors the dynamic where a focused Facebook outmaneuvered a distracted MySpace, highlighting a critical incumbent advantage.

Initially, AI chatbots were seen as a threat to Google's search dominance. Instead, Google leveraged its existing ecosystem (Chrome, Android) and distribution power to make its AI, Gemini, the default on major platforms, turning a potential disruptor into another layer of its fortress.