YC doesn’t after all often amicus briefs in court, the relationship was a definitely a factor in doing so. Stating that relationship clearly and disclosing financial upside they may get in the soon to be for profit conversion is relevant to this case.
The google decision could have implications for OpenAI’s business and therefore their enterprise value .
Bringing in some random hypocrisy is a great way to unmake your own point, TechCrunch.
However, YC is also closely tied to OpenAI, which is now directly competing against Google on search. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman used to run YC, while OpenAI was the first group affiliated with YC Research.Here's one article about it: https://www.techradar.com/tech/people-are-increasingly-swapp...
[1] And yes, I work there, but on boring firmware and wouldn't know a transformer if you hit me with one. I'm just a consumer who's recently learned that typing detailed questions into the search prompt gives shockingly great summary answers with references.
This is like the railroad arguing they don’t compete with trucks before promptly going bankrupt in the late 60s / early 70s.
A truck and train are both transport. Google and ChatGPT are both fuzzy information retrieval functions. As a Kagi user, I’m not really seeing a massive difference in quality between first-page Google results and whatever nonsense LLMs serve up for the average searcher, who is not typically searching out of hardened utility as much as rough convenience.
YC is a monopolist?
I found pretty much nobody willing to accept that logic that Saudi Arabia having a poor human rights record doesn't make Canada exempt from being called out.
Thats a reason why Apple is so against the opening up of the App market, and wanted to die on the hill of stopping apps for letting people know about offline purchase options.
They had issues long ago with the iBooks Store, of all things. Particularly absurd given the nature of Amazon’s business.
It's become normalized that the Internet is a barely usable ad ridden hellscape (ever try to read any recipe on your phone?).
Imagine if Google punished sites for overly intrusive ads in its result rankings? We'd have a whole better internet.
If OpenAI is not safe from anticompetitive practices then no YC startup is.
Google has Google Search, Gmail, Scholar, Patents, Books, Maps, Workspace, Drive, Gemini and Youtube just to name several killer applications that are being widely used by billions of people every single day [2].
I think NotebookLM is easily one of best products come up from Google since the initial search engine with PageRank. It's a combination of virtual personal and research assistant that's very helpful that keep you in the driving seat with much less hallucinations compared to your typical LLMs including Google own Gemini.
Never paid Google for all its services all my life but now I'd probably would pay for NotebookLM, and get 2 TB storage on top of that, that's telling something from the user of the early Google years, of more than 20 years.
[1] Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI” (1039 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322
[2] List of Google products:
US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945820 - May 2025 (936 comments)
Top of the org chart at these businesses should be the actual target, not the paper trail they set up to protect them.
arealaccount•7h ago
There’s a comment about OpenAI ties… kinda