As far as I'm aware OpenAI doesn't control any defaults for which AIChat service to use.
The OpenClaw guy is surely a decent product person, but OpenClaw did not innovate in any real sense. He was just pushing an existing idea to the limit without any concern for quality or security. It had its hype moment, it inspired a bunch of people, and might find its own niche, but it is a flavor of the week kind of thing. I've been getting a lot more cold-calls by non-technical people in the last few weeks thanks to it. Congratulations, the quality threshold that justifies my response rose in equal measure. Nothing was gained, just a lot of tokens spent.
The best free alternative to Google right is ironically $preferred_llm_provider and ChatGPT is the obvious uncapped free option. I think free will end up being OpenAI's most if they manage to make it profitable.
if people are still using it, then it's really one of the few things, right?
* you are wrong and it's not awful
* it _is_ awful but good enough for normal people to never care about alternatives, which are anyway not even very easy to find given the absolute stranglehold google has on that slice
either way not quite the same as choice of llms today.
I stopped using it, though, and I can't honestly say I've missed it. It was nice not having sponsored results, I guess, but overall it didn't feel like a transformative experience.
