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Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

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Re: Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

#51

Post by paulryanrogers »

mdasen wrote: post #28
verdverm wrote: post #4

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Don't most companies have these types of conversations? I haven't been at one yet that hasn't. Good startups look at their competitors and decide to clone some, and change other, features. Were we not excited here yesterday on HN, that Cloudflare is cloning and undercutting AWS S3?

> Were we not excited here yesterday on HN, that Cloudflare is cloning and undercutting AWS S3? I think there's a bit of a difference there. 1) There's an important difference between winner-take-all (or most) markets with very strong network effects and other markets. If most people use S3 and I use R2, it doesn't really damage my experience using R2. Let's say that Facebook was cloning features, but all platforms c…

This punching down concern highlights how broken anti trust enforcement is. When companies have more resources than whole countries they're advantages make competing in any remotely related endeavors high risk. Unless of course being bought out is the only goal. But even in that case the 800lbs gorilla may still prefer to do it themselves and swallow the market.

Re: Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

#53

Post by [deleted] »

cogman10 wrote: post #13
bis301 wrote: post #7

Honest question: Is this against the rules? If there's a market a company wants to enter, wouldn't they just analyze the cost to build (both product, and market/audience), vs. acquiring (both product, and market/audience), then pick the cheapest option?

Comes down to software patents. This is a damning doc if another company is suing them for patent infringement.

[deleted]

Re: Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

#54

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Isn't this what we aimed for with capitalism? Either way, the better product wins. Yes, potentially it's going to be Amazon. But the consumer will get to choose between Amazon and something else and pick the better and cheaper one. That's at least the goal. Then Amazon will revert some of the changes and someone will come back and do better what they do.

Re: Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

#55

Post by lamontcg »

verdverm wrote: post #4

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Don't most companies have these types of conversations? I haven't been at one yet that hasn't. Good startups look at their competitors and decide to clone some, and change other, features. Were we not excited here yesterday on HN, that Cloudflare is cloning and undercutting AWS S3?

Amazon spun off a search engine company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com

Initially I think they were exploring competing more directly with Google, and they definitely set up offices down in Palo Alto to try to siphon off talent.

Google opened up offices up in Seattle at around the same time.

Re: Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

#56

Post by ralfn »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #51
mdasen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Were we not excited here yesterday on HN, that Cloudflare is cloning and undercutting AWS S3? I think there's a bit of a difference there. 1) There's an important difference between winner-take-all (or most) markets with very strong network effects and other markets. If most people use S3 and I use R2, it doesn't really damage my experience using R2. Let's say that Facebook was cloning features, but all platforms c…

This punching down concern highlights how broken anti trust enforcement is. When companies have more resources than whole countries they're advantages make competing in any remotely related endeavors high risk. Unless of course being bought out is the only goal. But even in that case the 800lbs gorilla may still prefer to do it themselves and swallow the market.

>When companies have more resources than whole countries

This is the part that scares me. Not the amount of resources, but the shitty quality that still comes out of those processes.

I suppose scaling up organisations is even harder than scaling up infrastructure.

This example is actually great, because Whatsapp won the market anyway, with a small team against "more resources than whole countries". Facebook ended up buying it.

Remember how Google lost to youtube and had to buy it too?

To me it seems large organisations use anti competitive behavior to be able to compete against smaller entities, because when it comes to quality large organisations just can't compete against smaller ones.

Or why large chain restaurants generally don't win michelin stars.

And even the successful stuff by large companies tend to be small teams. Think Google Maps or Gmail, which were created by small independent teams. If the whole company could mess with those products they would have likely failed.

Re: Internal emails show Zuckerberg and Facebook execs discuss cloning competitors

#57

Post by stereoradonc »

WhatsApp is cloning Telegram, and no one bats an eyelid. I guess Telegram is the kryptonite of HN forums only because WhatsApp has supposedly "e2e" conversations- which stay intact even in the most repressive regimes, but Telegram is routinely blocked in the same places - read Iran etc.
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