I don't know what was inctomis, but in the case of lycos it was very easy to switch of search engine, while someone who wants to compete with SnapChat will be facing a chicken and egg problem (nobody will want to join SnapChat because nobody will be there at first), so en barrier to compete to SnapChat is not that low, even if the product isn't technically hard to replicate.
Was valued at 25B in 2000, ended up getting acquired by Yahoo for 235M. In terms of stocks - from $241 down to $1.63
That easy replication of the product is exactly what I'm talking about. Search engine is actually a much more sophisticated setup and even in that space multiple companies went belly up.
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