https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191007/12485543137/facebooks-failure-to-stop-tiktok-shows-once-again-that-big-companies-often-cant-just-copy-disruptive-upstarts.shtml

With all the recent talk of breaking up big tech in the news again lately, one of the most common refrains is that the big internet companies (mainly Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple) are so big and so dominant that no upstart competitor can possibly succeed against them, in part because if they get too big, those giants will just "copy" the competitor and put them out of business. This narrative has gotten a lot of support from the story of Facebook effectively copying SnapChat a few years back. But, it's important to note just how rare this actually is. The history of tech innovation is littered with disrupted giants which often tried, but utterly failed, to "copy" the upstart.

For many, many years, we've talked about this. Part of the problem is that "copying" features or or services is what we've referred to as cargo cult copying, where you're really just copying the tacit, visible features, but without a deeper understanding of why people really use a tool or service. It's why Microsoft failed in trying to just copy Intuit out of business. It's why Facebook failed when it tried to just copy GroupOn (back when people thought GroupOn was a disruptor to Facebook's local ads). It's why smaller companies frequently out innovate giant, dominant incumbents. Part of it is that the incumbents don't notice the innovation until it's too late, but more often because they don't really understand why an innovation is so disruptive -- often because it attacks their position in a tangential way. That wasn't the case with SnapChat and Facebook, where the competition was more direct and more core to Facebook's business.