> Every one of the big 5 could spend a couple billion to win a market.

I promise you that Microsoft would happily dump a couple billion into the phone market to own it. Microsoft paid 7.2 billion just for Nokia, not counting the likely billions poured into the Windows Phone OS itself.

Disclosure: Microsoft employee

I'm not explaining myself well.

Consider fencing vs. sword fighting. In fencing, my goal is to turn on a little light when i touch your body with my epee. In sword fighting, my goal is to kill you. it's a gruesome analogy, and hard to really crystalize. The big 5 have something to lose. They fence. The little guy is sword fighting. Did you ever really feel like Microsoft would go out of business because they lost the phone market?

There is an umami to sword fighting. There's this whole other flavor that's hard to describe, unless you've tasted it. I know, it's kind of a bullshit argument. There's this visceral sense of impending doom that leads to brilliant or lucky moves. I don't believe a large, successful organization can really get that flavor. you can take fencing seriously, but it's still different than sword fighting.

I dunno. the best idea i have is to try playing poker. You have to face this horrible, awful feeling. You know the right thing to do, but it's so hard to do it. A good fencer will do the right thing. A sword fighter will do the right thing out of desperation.

I don't doubt Microsoft's commitment. I think they were committed at the wrong layer. Furthermore, i think their income level makes it impossible to see the layer to commit at.

My apologies if this seems crazy. It's hard to articulate.

> The big 5 have something to lose. They fence. The little guy is sword fighting.

This isn't just you not explaining yourself well. This is an entirely different claim. Your first claim was that the big companies "are incapable of risking losing billions on an idea" which is patently untrue.

This claim isn't as clearly untrue. It's just not meaningful. If you need billions to win, then the "little guy" need not apply. If only big players can afford to compete, then that's who will compete.

For the record, Nokia and BlackBerry and a number of other phone companies got to the point that they had nothing to lose, dumped in billions, and still lost the market. I think you vastly underestimate the difficulty of taking a major market from an established player.

> There is an umami to sword fighting. There's this whole other flavor that's hard to describe, unless you've tasted it. I know, it's kind of a bullshit argument.

Yes, that is a bullshit argument, partly because it's the whole "you couldn't possibly understand" thing that is in general a bad argument, but mostly because this claim means that you've been in a sword fight and literally hacked someone to death. I find this hard to believe.

Windows Mobile, Bing, Google+, Allo etc. show companies are willing to invest billions to win a market. But Google+, Bing and WM shows spending multi billions don't win you the market.

This is the first comment I've ever favorited on here. Not just because of how true it is, but mostly because it applies to so many startups I've seen that have taken a little risk, gotten a little reward, and totally locked up with risk aversion and failed.