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Comment by dsacco | Hacker News Reader

There is nothing inherently righteous or honorable about allowing another company to lay exclusive claim to features. That "shameless copying" is an example of competition, and it's what turns the wheels of capitalism.

What would you have Facebook do? "Well, darn. I guess we can't implement those features, Snapchat beat us to it! Time to just lay over and let them churn our users." This is not how any rational company works, and every major tech company has copied others many times.

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>an example of competition

Not when you are leveraging monopoly power to gain market share somewhere else. This kind of capitalism tends to degenerate.

They gave a massive buyout offer before copying. There was only one thing left to do after that.

If you're arguing that Facebook behaved rationally, then we aren't in disagreement. If you're arguing that Facebook acted in the public interest, then you're going to need a different argument.

So you seem to be implying that ONE company having a feature is somehow better for public interest than TWO companies having that feature?

Or that it is better for public interest that people prop up companies with multi billion dollar valuations on the basis of trivially copy-able features?

If that were a complete accounting of the variables then yes, that is what I would be saying. That is not a complete accounting of the variables though.

It is harmful to the public interest to allow a company to use its monopoly status as leverage to monopolize other markets. Facebook is competing for image messaging in the same sense that Lance Armstrong was competing in the tour de france.

Monopoly is the degenerate case of capitalism, and this kind of behavior by monopolies is how the degeneracy reproduces.

how is the public interest harmed by letting facebook users send snaps?

The public interest is harmed by Facebook eliminating all competitors.

Who in their right mind would argue that facebook is acting in the public interest?

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