That sounds like Amazon -- if you've got a hot selling product on Amazon, you can expect them to copy it and start selling it under the Amazon brand:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...
My point is that they'd be categorized as basic staple items. Someone else might have sold a particular size or feature of X, but I don't see any reason why Amazon or another competitor wouldn't think to copy it.
Instead (as I made in a different reply a couple hours before yours) I believe it's the strength of Brand Recognition as a form of Quality Control, which is an area that has decayed on Amazon as a whole but less so with their own brand of products.
But the article I referenced above was a company that came out with a nice laptop stand design and a few months later, Amazon started selling one of their own that looked basically the same (but not identical).
I don't think that was an issue with the UI. Their UI was quite nice and the overall UX was too. Thing was they started by driving up hype, then letting a lot of people in but not everyone. Those lots left because it didn't have the main drive of a social media platform. Users. Their friends weren't allowed in yet. And then more people were let in who left. And then everyone. A horrid way to launch.
No their UI sucked. One third of the page was occupied by a stupid header you couldn't even reduce or remove with a CSS hack. I hated it. Fortunately now, most websites doing that tend to disappear.
Also, the content of the page itself was 1/3 wide, which is ridiculous when one is trying to read a long blog post.
The Google+ was a disaster UI wise, I would not be surprised it highly contributed to its demise.
What? I must have missed that because I don't remember seeing it.
>Also, the content of the page itself was 1/3 wide, which is ridiculous when one is trying to read a long blog post.
Which would be much wider than the actual content on it's main competitor facebook.
Apple is doing the same thing on it's own turf. If you make successful app expect to see 80% functionality crap copy added to next iOS release as a feature.
You say that like they are equally bad for you. Being bought out is great for the previous owners. (Otherwise, they wouldn't sell.)
The only reason not to sell is because you believe Google can't break your business before you get a better offer or you can IPO. If you think they can do that then you don't really have much of a choice.
Founders tend to factor this in to their thinking from the start. "Acquired by Google" is often considered a desirable exit goal.
IPO is kind of a sale too. (Though it's relatively easy for founders to keep control in an IPO, given the market's acceptance of weird share voting arrangements.)
If the other option is being broken then of course you sell. Even if you could make more money in the long run if they weren't holding a gun to your head.
But back to the point. There really isn't anything wrong with what they are doing, they are a typical business. Again, nothing wrong with that. They do stuff for their own self-interest. They are not your friends. Organic search results get in the way of advertising.