> Time and time again, we've been shown. You can copy all you want, you can even shove it into the faces of your billions of users and find use for it. Doesn't mean you'll beat the market leader.
Except this is not true.
Microsoft became the biggest company in the world with this strategy. Most famoulsy, Windows was a copy of MacOS, and Internet Explorer (which became so dominant it took Microsoft to court) of Netscape. Android copied iOS and became bigger than it. Again, Instagram famously copied Stories from Snapchat, and quickly took over [2]. There's many examples of a bigger company copying smaller ones and using their distribution or ecosystems to win.
> Microsoft is by far the biggest player in consumer laptops, with edge and bing being the default options. So why can't they come even close to chrome and google?
I don't know if you're perhaps too young or too new to the industry to know about the browser wars and the Microsoft anti-trust case, but if Microsoft pulled all the stops it once upon a time did, it would. It so happens Google is has an infinite money machine too though, and can pour many millions in the courts if Microsoft were to try.
> You'll rarely beat market leaders just by copying them.
Let me correct this sentence for you. You'll rarely beat the big companies by copying them, but the big companies can easily beat you by copying you. OpenAI might seem big, but it hasn't found its infinite money machine yet.
Except this is not true.
Microsoft became the biggest company in the world with this strategy. Most famoulsy, Windows was a copy of MacOS, and Internet Explorer (which became so dominant it took Microsoft to court) of Netscape. Android copied iOS and became bigger than it. Again, Instagram famously copied Stories from Snapchat, and quickly took over [2]. There's many examples of a bigger company copying smaller ones and using their distribution or ecosystems to win.
> Microsoft is by far the biggest player in consumer laptops, with edge and bing being the default options. So why can't they come even close to chrome and google?
I don't know if you're perhaps too young or too new to the industry to know about the browser wars and the Microsoft anti-trust case, but if Microsoft pulled all the stops it once upon a time did, it would. It so happens Google is has an infinite money machine too though, and can pour many millions in the courts if Microsoft were to try.
> You'll rarely beat market leaders just by copying them.
Let me correct this sentence for you. You'll rarely beat the big companies by copying them, but the big companies can easily beat you by copying you. OpenAI might seem big, but it hasn't found its infinite money machine yet.
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomward/2017/05/03/oh-snap-inst...