AI

Microsoft’s assistant rides on Windows and Office defaults, and keeps getting installed where nobody asked for it.

Flagship consumer LLM: free tier competes for attention; Plus, Team, and API convert habit into recurring revenue.

Anthropic’s assistant: funded by subscriptions, not ads—but weekly usage caps and default training on chats count against it.

Google’s LLM family bundled with Workspace and Android: utility rises with account depth; free use feeds the broader ad and data stack.

Local LLM runner that lets you download and run open-weight models on your own hardware; no API calls, no usage billing, no data leaving your machine—VC-backed but FOSS by design.

Answer-first search with citations; Pro tier and publisher deals raise questions about who gets traffic and margin.