That's a terrible way to think. Drew Houston knew Microsoft and Google were already in the midst of building competitors when he applied Dropbox to YC.

I hope fellow entrepreneurs dont ever get discouraged when they see larger companies follow them on the same trail. It means they are on the right track more than anything else.

Dropbox didnt get discouraged and neither should any other startup.

I think you're comparing apples to oranges here. Dropbox was different and still is and came after Google and Microsoft were building their stuff.

In this case, LiveNinja was first, Google copied it, apparently building the exact same product.

So, I'd read the original post as "please buy us" as well.

nailed it.

Another example is Facebook Poke and Snapchat.

Are there a lot of products where Google's forced out the competition? All I can think of are search, maps, and webmail (a long time ago) and web analytics (closely coupled to their core business).

The rest of the stuff I can think of is either competing but not dominant (phone OSes, browsers), or bought as a winner (doubleclick, youtube). They don't seem to have honed their Microsoft-ish emulate-and-destroy skills.

He's probably not bluffing that Google moving into your space is a good thing for your company.

Please buy us or give me a job.

Also google reimplementing somebody's working business is one of the most evil things I can think of in IT.

Google has pretty much unlimited resources and an army of bored overqualified engineers. They can literally take any successful online business, implement it themselves, and push it forward with their search engine.

It's not illegal, I know, but it is unethical.