I understand that their advantage is the $0 trading commission. From what I've heard, they have a minimal feature set in order to support commissionless trading

I understand that their advantage is the $0 trading commission. From what I've heard, they have a minimal feature set in order to support commissionless trading, and most of their funding comes from 'float' (interest on unspent money in their members' accounts) -- although, from other comments here, it sounds like this might be changing. Schwab can't copy $0 commissions without removing their reporting tools; I expect the companies will be comfortably able to coexist.