Considering Docker literally developed the underlying technology, and a lot of the complexity and capabilities of Kubernetes come from its design, they had a tremendous advantage that was squandered.
Google clearly had a huge advantage too since they have been using containers for years. But Docker certainly was in a good place.
Is it though? Aside from cloud vendors (Azure/AWS/GCP) who's the "huge market"?
From memory docker and some of its engineers and managers where at logger heads with redhat and google see rocket, systemd containers, podman and k8s This forced docker to commoditise itβs tech or docker was slowly boiled into commoditised component
Signed arm chair warrior
Their CEO stepped down three years ago:
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2016/09/luke_kanie...
The new CEO has ONE expertise, which is winding down bankrupt tech companies:
1) Is there another company that benefited from that missed opportunity? No. K8S is free and it "makes money" in the sense that it's a great on-ramp for GCP, and therefore GCP is happy to subsidize it.
2) It's never too easy to be the "first" company to break into a new technology or opportunity. Look at Altavista, and how it lost to Google in just a few years, despite when Google started Altavista was already a huge company.
3) I am not sure that your proposed solution would have worked, at least in terms of making Docker successful. It is the obvious alternative, but hard to be certain that its outcome would have been a better one for Docker (the company).