[dkrich]

Why not? At the risk of sounding like a hand-wringing capitalist, at the end of the day, isn't the purpose of a business to charge money in exchange for providing a good or service that is useful to a customer? If Starbucks can greater serve the needs of their customers by providing a new item (regardless of where they got the idea from), then why shouldn't they? Some might argue that they are actually doing their customers a disservice by not providing it and making them go elsewhere.

[reducesuffering]

Isn't the problem that at an extreme this gives no incentive for smaller coffee ships to experiment and roll the dice on new ideas that may not work, because if they succeed, Starbucks will end up reaping the rewards.

[theseatoms]

Except Facebook doesn't charge money. I wish they would.

[dkrich]

Neither does Snapchat, but I don't see how that changes the argument anyway. If Facebook greater serves its users needs, then that brings in more users who spend more time on its network of apps which greater serves its paying customers (advertisers).