[blehn]

And isn't he the one who said, "I don't fucking want innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

Not that innovative companies are inherently ethical, but I'd say using your market clout to squash competitors while blatantly stealing from them is at least ethically questionable.

[fleitz]

Copying is not stealing, at best it's IP infringement. For further clarity consider Thomas Jefferson: "That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

[rbanffy]

> Copying is not stealing

But it does nothing to, as Jefferson would certainly point out, improve the human condition, to simply copy what someone else did and crush that someone else with your market dominance.

This is just plain evil.

Demonstrating, BTW, his own point - he too became an hypocrite that's capable of doing anything immoral in order to make more money, much like the HBS alumni he was criticizing.

[inerte]

But he copies and improves, so much that the end product is barely comparable to the original. It's like saying a Ferrari is a descendant of the black T-Ford. Sure, but it proves nothing.

[rbanffy]

I can't argue with Zynga's products being improved versions of their competitors' - I have never used (and have consistently blocked) them. I was questioning the "I don't fucking want innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers" thing, which is plain ugly.

[fleitz]

What we're missing from that quote is context. Also, it appears to have worked for Mr. Pincus and not for his competitors, obviously he did something a little different.

[rbanffy]

> it appears to have worked for Mr. Pincus and not for his competitors, obviously he did something a little different.

Couldn't that be attributed to his company having a larger user base and more money than its competition?