Few bits of different perspective (with a background in corporate strategy). Microsoft has commoditized their ecosystem, look at all of the equivalent PC maker

Few bits of different perspective (with a background in corporate strategy). Microsoft has commoditized their ecosystem, look at all of the equivalent PC makers, equivalent Silver/Gold/etc. parters, LARs, VARs, number of anti-virus vendors (and other software companies, etc.) all replaceable and Microsoft drives them business through an overlay sales and marketing team. They are the best in the world at this, Cisco has been the 2nd best. Facebook is more vulnerable to loss of 3rd party content than the article states. They have many categories of content now and they've done an excellent job of building deep hooks making their platform the ideal place to publish so the moat is deep and wide but it isn't an invincible business. The # of DAU and the amount of activity on the platform would drop if Facebook lost any of it's third party content sources (1) publishers, (2) businesses, (3) community organizations, (4) topical groups, (5) marketplace sellers, (6) event organizers, (7) .., (..) .., (N) .. [I could go on for a while longer on all of the different ways Facebook is a platform within a platform fighting on multiple fronts, the 6 give a good enough of an idea to get started..]