Thing is, OpenAI/Anthropic/etc. are demonstrably taking up those ideas. There actually were (are?) AI PDF reader startups and AI research assistant startups. (And AI coding startups, AI video startups, image analysis startups, etc.)

"AI startups," if they make sense, seem to have a very short shelf-life. They're either overtaken by the continuing improvement in LLM context windows, or, if there's a real and general unmet need for what they offer, the giants will tend to integrate it.

Google actually did make their own Docusign, it's called eSignature [1] and it was built into Google Workplace

[1] https://workspace.google.com/resources/esignature/

And in true google fashion, it only works with Google accounts; if you send a signature request to a non-google account, it says it's sent but does not work...

There’s a specific reason why google doesnt promote a Docusign like product even when they have superior technical abilities.

It probably comes down to the fact that code is not that crucial but all the other non technical aspects like distribution, supplier relations and marketing that makes a product.

Maybe LLM wrappers turn out to be that way. The model may not matter but the distribution and customer relation etc would matter more.

Because of a mix of comparative advantage and opportunity cost. Google as an entity absolutely dwarfs those other companies, and competes at that scale. Airbnb’s annual revenues are lower than Googles annual r&d spend. Google’s “wins” need to move the needle on a $2tn valuation, and an Airbnb size win doesn’t do that.

This is also the case in the past with companies like Xerox and why didn't they do X with Y that came out of PARC.

There's only so much product bandwidth a company can take on that makes sense, look at the graveyard of Google products.

Because everything they attempt is inevitably compared to Google's ad business - which makes everything else look like a starving beggar.