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Sure we can stop, although it is a competition. Its a competition for dollars, it has territory, it has strategies and tactics, and it generally is amenable to the same analysis you would use when analyzing armies attempting to capture, defend, or hold territory.

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I called it a competition myself. My issue is only with the part where people look for an overall “winner”. It’s an evolutionary process, there is no winner. Your ending question will likely never have a meaningful answer.

But there are extinctions, which is kind of like losing. But more importantly there are technologies that become widespread (VHS) and those that never do (BetaMax) and understanding the successful technology as the area where additional investment is merited is often, if imprecisely, called the "winning" technology.

I can absolutely guarantee that my ending question will have a meaningful answer, either one or none of these systems will be the one that everyone uses, the other two will be the "niche" ones that hardly anybody uses (and I say this as a diehard Amiga fan boy). And as much as I might dislike the choice the market makes, I understand that once critical mass is achieved, it becomes economically unviable to continue investing in the "losing" technology.

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