4 ms·

Not every cloner wins -- but the biggest winners tend to be just that. There are lots of examples -- but an easy one is google. Google didn't invent search en

• bad_user 15y ago
  Google didn't invent search engines A "search engine" is an obvious idea. Google invented a new algorithm for ranking items and made their system scale. What Google shamelessly copied was the idea of serving ads to users based on the current context (search query or in-page content), which I think it's an idea that does have some value. Also, in regards to webmail, the protocol itself has value and it's a true innovation. However, the actual platform used to build a client is not. Since the web happened already, a webmail interface was a natural progress. The success of a product can't really be correlated with it being an original "invention" or a clone. Other factors are a lot more important, like quality of implementation (IMHO, the biggest one), timing, distribution and luck.
  • mootothemax 15y ago
    A "search engine" is an obvious idea. Do you remember when Yahoo was just a page with links on it? Or the time before crawlers? How about when the default was OR queries instead of AND? The fun of having to search twice if your query contained the word "color," spelt with and without the letter U? I'm sorry, but you just can't gloss over the above - which is a pretty meagre list at best - and say "that's obvious." If we always stuck with version 1, no innovation would take place.