Data is still valuable and you can build a moat with it. But this discussion isn't about data, it's about models.

A better analogy would be paywalled general-purpose programming languages, where any access to running code is restricted. Such a programming language would get virtually no mindshare.

This Google employee is just saying, let's not make that mistake.

Even if Google fired all AI researchers tomorrow and just used open source models going forward, they could still build killer products on them due to their data moat. That's the takeaway.