Most revolutions are merely power transfers.

But sometimes the incumbent crushes the revolutionary.

And sometimes the incumbent hires or bribes the revolutionary.

And sometimes the incumbent guts the revolutionary and wears his face as a mask.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Can you imagine a more effective way to incentivise more people to start even more disrupting platforms? Can you image a more effective way to get investors to give money to these upstarts?

It's much easier to get your rabble-rousing startup to threaten disruption (and then be bought up as a precaution), than if you had to actually battle it out in the marketplace to the bitter end.

It's a bad thing for the rest of us, because it means that all those platforms don't actually disrupt anything at the end of the day, and we have to keep eating the same turds.

You get way more of these new platforms popping up. And some of the might not get bought up in time. (And the wealth of the incumbent ain't infinite, so there's a limit to how many they can buy up.)