>At the time of AOL's acquisition of ICQ it had 20 million active users¹
Or 40% of the internet using population of the world.
>WhatsApp has 430 million
Or 16% of the internet using population of the world.
40% is clearly closer to "won" than 16% is.
No, because the internet was expanding rapidly, so it wasn't won at all. That's like saying a basketball game is won because one of the teams got 100% of the points awarded in the first minute.
My point is that as "number of happy messaging users" approaches "number of humans" things will get harder and harder for a messaging upstart. Whoever I was responding to was suggesting that there will just be a long chain of succession forever and ever. I'm saying I think surpassing the encumbants was easy five years ago, is still doable today, but will be quite hard in 20 years.