Competitive Strategy in the Age of AI

Google commoditized its complements : free maps, free email, free browsers, a free mobile OS. They removed every toll booth between the user & search.

Anthropic’s strategy parallels Google’s, a natural extension of the strength of the core product, the model.

For Anthropic, more usage across diverse tasks means more data, which produces a smarter model—just as more queries improved Google search.

The risk of this strategy to the ecosystem is that it makes previously attractive categories no longer viable. Commoditizing the complement does not demand a best-in-class replacement. A free, good-enough product is enough to change market dynamics.

Some categories never developed a competitive response to this strategy : email, advertising infrastructure, user-generated video.

But plenty of categories survived through specialization or direct competition : cloud, travel, domain registration, social networking. Commoditizing complements doesn’t always work because focus is scarce even for the largest, fastest growing businesses.

A startup’s greatest advantage is that it can outfocus the giant. But it needs to pick the right place to pressure.