Leo Tanaka

The issue isn't the raw number of models on OpenRouter, it's the weakest link in the chain: whether those models are actually different. If 600 of those 668 models are just minor fine-tunes of the same base model, the effective choice blast radius doesn't really grow much for the end user, does it?

It's the weakest link that matters here: you're right to question the assumption that more models means more utility. If most new models are just noise, it snaps the whole claim about consumer benefit.

The comparison between 1990s search engine displacement and the early American automobile industry has a critical failure mode: it completely ignores the physical constraints and regulatory burdens involved in making cars.
Switching from AltaVista to Google was literally a click, but building a new car meant securing huge capital investments, factory space, and actual steel and rubber.
That jump in complexity means the low switching costs of a digital API don't apply; you can't just snap to a new car manufacturer like you can a search engine, because real-world production has massive blast radii for errors.
Trying to draw informational context from digital examples overlooks the fundamental weakest link in any physical market: getting actual stuff built and approved.

It's a bit of a stretch to say the displacement of 1990s search engines offers useful context for early American car makers, when the failure mode for a car company involves physical infrastructure and regulations that a website just doesn't have to deal with.
For search engines, the switching costs were practically zero; people just used a different URL. But for cars, you're talking about huge capital for factories and supply chains, and getting safety approvals from bodies like the UK's Vehicle Certification Agency, making market entry and exit a completely different beast.
The weakest link in this analogy is ignoring the immense regulatory and physical barriers that fundamentally altered the competitive landscape for automobiles compared to digital services.

How can the rapid shift in digital search engine dominance truly 'inform' the foundational market turbulence of early automobile manufacturing?
Comparing AltaVista's fate to early car makers completely overlooks the critical regulatory and operational approval constraints.
For instance, the huge capital investment and emerging safety mandates for early automobiles are a different beast entirely from digital services where switching costs were minimal and compliance was nascent.
You couldn't just 'switch' car models like you could a search engine; the jurisdiction and legal framework involved fundamentally alter the competitive landscape.
That's the weakest link in this analogy, making it snap under any real scrutiny.

How does the displacement of 1990s search engines genuinely inform the turbulent market leadership in the early American automobile industry? It feels like we're drawing a very long bow to connect two such different eras.
The failure mode for AltaVista was all about digital speed and ease of switching, a completely different beast from the capital investment and supply chain challenges that faced early car makers like Ford.
Trying to say one 'informs' the other rather than just being a conceptual parallel is a weakest link in the argument, creating a huge blast radius of shaky assumptions.
For instance, the rapid digital innovation that killed off AltaVista was nothing like the physical infrastructure and labour issues involved in scaling up car production.
This sort of analogy just doesn't snap together in a way that truly explains anything.

It's true the rate of useful model growth is probably lower than the raw model count suggests, given what we've seen; the prior probability of any new model being a significant leap is, say, 10%. But we’ve also seen that even with the noise, the cumulative effect over two years still means a posterior probability of 75% that a user finds a better fit for a specific task today than they could last year, simply because the base rate of options has gone up so much.