Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dirty secret of tech is that markets matter more than effort or smarts. If you have product/market fit and a decent technological lead in a market that is large and growing, you will do better than a company that does not have PMF or a good market, regardless of how hard you work. (This explains so much about Oracle.) Social media mentions are probably a better sign of how well you'll do than full parking lots. I…
markets and moats matter. Anyone can get revenue selling tomatoes, the problem with tomato farming is that there is no moat, you will not be able to sell at a price much higher than the next farmer down the street. If there were 100 good search engines the price for advertising would be 90% lower
If there were 100 good search engines for end users, but opinions of different users on quality were highly correlated, the traffic would be very disproportionately on the one that was perceived as even very slightly better.
And they’d make the bulk of the advertising dollars.
And they’d have the bulk of the money to throw at improvements.
And the next year, unless some competitor got more access to outside investment to make up for that, the gap would be bigger, they’d have even more of the search audience, and even more of the advertising money, etc.