They just don't simply "acquire" you, with a gun to your head. They make an offer and then one presumes they would mull it over. It is publicly known that Yahoo tendered the $1 billion USD offer at Facebook in its infancy. Obviously they said no, and then they disrupted the market.

I'd also like to point you to Clay Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation. One of the parts is that well run companies while doing everything optimally will lead themselves to destruction because they will laugh and scoff at the idea of being involved at the lower-end market brought on by new technologies.

Then theres also the internal resistance within the company. Imagine trying to staff up a small team to checkout a possible new technology to do X. No rational manager will want to take that opportunity as it is clearly a fool's errand. They'd rather stay and be the manager for the profit generating center, rather than go pursue some foolish idea that clearly will never go anywhere.

So what you end up with is many, many reasons why the best companies miss the ball on where the market was moving to in an obvious (in hindsight) way.

[0]https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation

In many cases, a large company can "hold a gun" to a small company by undercutting it until it acquiesces or goes out of business - see Amazon vs. Quidsi, for example [1]. This may well be proscribed anti-competitive behavior, but the damage is done before the courts rule, even if the startup can afford to see it through the legal process.

And for publicly-owned companies, resisting is rarely feasible because a majority of shareholders will find it to be a risky proposition (and a majority may have invested in hopes of a takeover, anyway.)

It is rare for a startup to grow large enough to challenge an entrenched incumbent in a large market without taking on a majority of investors who are not necessarily committed to fighting for independence.

[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting-do...

Well, one way to level the playing field would be to disallow monopolization via the winner-take-all effect.

One way to do this would be to require public APIs, so that competitors can make rival designs/experiences.

For example, if Amazon uses its monopoly to only show its own products in the first page of search results, even when they cost more or have worse reviews, then a competitor could build an interface that does better.

I still think this is a circumstance dependent scenario. For instance, should outside parties have public access to your social graph?

Also, I don’t think there is much value add if companies are just reverse engineering the incumbent. If Google allows another company to get its search results easily to copy search, did the world improve?

Google’s moat was partially disrupted by Facebook, a closed network, and mobile/mobile apps.

Your last example has occurred for a number of years with shelf space at grocery stores and pharmacies. The CVS branded Advil is cheaper, and CPG companies can pay to get the best shelf space.