I agree it's an advantage once you're established. And even well-funded companies like Microsoft and Oracle are often so overly-bureaucratic that even with hundreds of millions in support their "me too" offering can (and often does) miss the mark.
They copy once an idea shows traction, but having not done the legwork themselves, they won't necessarily understand why the idea was successful in the first place. This is why you see huge companies like that wasting tons of resources trying to catch up or, if they're smart, simply acquiring the team with the winning idea.
But Microsoft can afford to spend years throwing resources at their product if they really want to get into that market. Release 1.0 may be crap and not a serious threat to you, but Release 4.0 might blow you out of the water.
They copy once an idea shows traction, but having not done the legwork themselves, they won't necessarily understand why the idea was successful in the first place. This is why you see huge companies like that wasting tons of resources trying to catch up or, if they're smart, simply acquiring the team with the winning idea.
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