> however there was clearly demand for personal transportation and portable music players.

I think that makes my point further. There is demand for social networks

I'll concede that portability may or may not be the next big thing for social networks. Let's speak more generally.

People want better social networks. They want to connect with friends more easily. To be honest, my Facebook feed is improving bit by bit, but it's still not as good or interesting as it could be. My perception is that Facebook is 100% focused on improving the feed, but without competition, we'll never have anyone thinking outside the Facebook box. Mark has the final say on certain strategies, and I think his vision is great, but his company would be even greater if there were another Mark.

Jobs and Gates fed off each other. Their efforts to market computers to the world helped each other's businesses grow faster than they would've grown alone. By borrowing each other's ideas, we got better products. And their employees were constantly on their toes. Google and Facebook are amazing companies and provide more services to their employees today than Apple and MS in the 90s.

However, the same energy isn't there to improve their core products. Google could be much better at machine translation across all languages, which is part of search, for example. In the future, I think they will be. Without another real competitor, they're free to work on whatever side projects please their employees. The core products miss out on advancements that may otherwise arrive sooner.

All of this is fine and I think tech will thrive regardless. The reason I write all that is I believe in churning up ideas from the bottom that might not otherwise find support. I don't think I'm the only one with this idea.

Erm, it seems as though you are explaining why competition is good. Is there somethings else that I'm missing?

I think most people know competition is good for the consumer. I'm saying, competition is also good for the companies themselves. Often in tech you see one company, its employees, or its users lambasting the competition. It is self defeating to wish away all your competition. It is a rare company who can continue to innovate in the face of having no competition. Right now FB doesn't have much competition in the US for its core product -- helping people connect with their friends

Perhaps this is just a recent revelation for me, and talking about it helps form my thoughts. And maybe I'm wrong about FB. I don't use Snapchat or Instagram etc. My sense is that FB is far ahead.

I don't think everyone realizes the benefits of competition for the companies but many of us do, a and it wasn't clear that this was really the point you were making.

I sometimes like to think of it as not so much a benefit of competition as a risk for monopoly holders.

> I sometimes like to think of it as not so much a benefit of competition as a risk for monopoly holders.

For sure. It is also a risk for state-favored companies that hold monopolies inside authoritarian regimes. Their growth will probably be limited to their own country. Without local competition, it may be difficult to make the leap to global competitiveness. This is very theoretical as I have no experience. But I think you can draw some parallels to the way politicians cut their teeth. They begin at the local level and work their way up.