I imagine the comparisons to chess are just to entice investors.
I don’t really have strong feelings on it. If it ultimately helps popularise Go more in the west I think that’s a good thing.
That being said, I’m not too fond of some of the things in their pitch. They want to have “superior gamification”, which includes adding things like loot boxes. Out of all the servers I’ve played on Fox is the most gamified and I absolutely loath that aspect of it.
Betting is fun but it can get quite toxic. I’ve seen pro players receiving death threats because they lost a game and caused someone to lose a lot of “money”.
The inclusion of betting features has led major Go servers in Korea to implement an 18+ age restriction. Tygem, for instance, maintains two separate applications: one that offers betting and another that does not, with the latter being available to all ages.
Mobile Fox(Tencent Go), in early days, also had betting feature but it does not anymore. I assume apps are under more strict review process.
There is also a “cheering” option other than the “betting”. But the difference is that when a viewer cheer they might just cheer and leave, and only came back at the end or even after to see who win or loss.
But if viewers are betting, they have a stack in the game, and would likely stick through the game, or at least came back to check often, thus greatly increase the viewership and “community” union so to speak, each side marches toward their common goals, and curse the one who make them lose their bet afterward.
You can come up with a list of things that chess com does and that OGS already does.
The main difference is really the scale. You can match more quickly because there’s more chess players. They have a bunch more resources and prize money tournaments likely again because they have more players and paid subscribers. They can probably hire more developers to get experimental changes created much more quickly.
If that’s the ideal, to just be “big”, then it doesn’t really matter which website it is, it’s just about marketing.
I could ask where do I find the chesscom of Mahjong but it doesn’t make the question any more refined.
If they’re asking, “where do a large number of people play online, and it’s easy to sign up and play in browser and in an app” then it’s still probably OGS.
You basically need a wiki to learn how to sign up for fox, tygem, wbaduk (maybe it’s changing with some of the new unofficial projects).
If they’re asking where do I get the fastest games, then maybe it’s Fox or GoQuest for 9x9 games.
Chess com is more than just a website though - there is an organisation behind it that promotes chess in various ways.
To give some context, chess saw a massive growth of online player base, especially during Covid pandemic. So much that people said things like “Chess made it into the main stream”.
Chess com organised events like PogChamps, where popular streamers (novice to chess) competed.
As I understand it, people who never played chess still enjoyed PogChamps because streamers they liked were playing, talking and reacting.
There were also critics of PogChamps, advocates of the traditional way.
As comparison, Lichess com is almost as popular (afaik), but I believe that they don’t organise events on a scale like chess com.
My assumption is they wish for something that boosts the popularity of Go in a similar way.
You could mention directly that you were inspired by a project of go magic, which wants to do better as OGS and which itself would like to become the chess.com of go.
OGS is far from being yet well rounded but still not that bad either. Go magic is using it to promote their products. Some players have a problem with OGS and don’t hesitate to give strong opinions (like “OGS will never change”, see the reddit)
Betting restricts the audience because in many places children are not supposed to have access to it. Besides betting could induce some taxes to pay, changing OGS into a gambling site.
Once KGS finally merges with us, all will be well.