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> Bing as of a handful of years ago wasn't all that bad -- in fact, if you lived in the Microsoft enterprise sphere, it was arguably better than Google. That i
by bawolff 2y ago
> Bing as of a handful of years ago wasn't all that bad -- in fact, if you lived in the Microsoft enterprise sphere, it was arguably better than Google.
That is probably not enough though. Products that are just a little better than something that is good enough usually fail. I'm reminded of all the analysises of why plan 9 failed.
- johnnyanmac 2y agonetwork effects are strong. At a certain critical mass, only the company itself can detrhrone the company. Otherwise, people will mostly settle for the familiar over the true best.
- bawolff 2y agoI think that is stateing it too far in the other direction. If you have a killer app, you can definitely dethrone the current king. I think it just has to be something much more significant than just marginal improvements.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoTo be a bit more subtle: you can make a better competitor and be successful. But it's really hard to "dethrone the king" as you put it. Twitter is a great example of a social media actively destroying itself in ways that'd already put a medium sized business in the red, but its competiton as of now is far from a threat. Reddit as well, but there's not even a consensus best alternative there. Subtle point #2, this is mostly for the general consumer. You can and will piss off professionals or businesses to a point where you shoot yourself in the foot Unity was the most recent high-profile example, and Adobe is slowly losing doting over its issues.
- tatersolid 2y agoXerox, Hoover, Amana, IBM PCs, Scotch tape, and many other totally dominant brands have been successfully planted by moderately “better” competitors.