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April 22, 2003
Business in America
As some in my life ask and wonder when I will start my next business, I must admit I am VERY jaded. I believed, what most believe, that America is a country where an average person can start a business and become successful. Indeed we see this every day. However, just as frequently, if not more frequently, the average individual has no chance of making it at all. That's because, if they choose to go into a field, already inhabited by larger companies, those companies will leverage their money to drive them out of business. If they create something new, showing an untapped market to be lucrative, another large company will enter the sector and drive them out of business.I was recently given a great example. In the 90s a company called Breath Assure released a breath mint in a pill which supposedly worked very well. At the time, Listerine was the #1 breath aid at the major drug stores. Breath Assure, a private upstart, took that #1 spot angering the owner of Listerine. Over the next 5 years Listerine sued Breath Assure repeatedly for anything they could think of until Breath Assure was out of money to defend themselves and had to go out of business.
You probably think what happened isn't fair. But 'fair' is determined by society and the law. In America, what Listernine did would be considered shrewd, but is certainly not illegal or immoral. They won against a competitor with their unique advantage, money.
Something is wrong with a system that encourages this type of behavior.
Posted by wonko at April 22, 2003 10:27 PM
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Comments
This reminds me, just a bit, of sports in which it has become common practice to foul the other team in the closing minutes of the game in some sort of attempt to slow them down and have a chance. What bothers me is that people I know accept this as an appropriate act, justified because it is strategically sound. This goes against what I had always assumed the rules surrounding fouls were meant for. Instead of "You ought not to foul. If you do, this will be the penalty," the thinking has become "Fouling is perfectly acceptible, and the tradeoff for fouling is such and such a penalty as outlined in the rulebook." Boo!
Posted by: kasei at April 23, 2003 02:17 AM
What about "stepping into the ball" in baseball in order to force a walk? In a sense, you're causing the opposing team to foul against you...
Posted by: David Pisoni at April 24, 2003 07:41 PM
Regarding bigger companies and smaller ones...
An executive at my company recently met with someone at a Very Large Software Company known for anticompetitive practices. He told him that a high executive at his company (who is often seen as simian) had put his designs on crushing a Very Popular internet search company just as they had targeted (successfully) another popular internet company years before...
Feeling Lucky?
Posted by: David Pisoni at April 24, 2003 07:46 PM
This will be an interesting study in how 'free' the net really is. Theoretically, Google became successfull through truly democratic means. I say that because it was not backed by any large companies. People chose to use it because it was so much better. There are actually very few instances of this type of mass democratic movement in the history of the net. Usually, some individual or small company comes up with a revolutionary idea. People, by choice, start using that product or service making it popular, but before they can really catch on, a larger company sees $$ and goes after the smaller company, either buying them out, suing them out, or just flexing them out by leveraging their size. Google defied that typical story. There are other products out there that have done the same, but for most, its too early to tell. Take Net News Wire. Its possible it will continue to be independent, but based on precedence, its just as like they will be bought or some other company will beat them out with an inferior competing product, now that blogging has hit the mainstream.
I want to believe Google will make it based on my ideas of fairness and democracy on the net. But as I look at history, I see it just as likely, if not more likely, that this Very Large Company will beat Google.
Posted by: Wonko at April 26, 2003 10:31 AM
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