[oblio]

Not related to startups, but: the free market's distorted. Google, Apple, Facebook & co. are quite competitive today.

But they are also sitting on war-chests worth multiples of their yearly incomes (or at least a big chunk of 1 yearly income) and they are close to monopolies in some of their markets.

Even if they'd break down this badly, they'd be around for decades. Heck, IBM is still around :)

[bpizzi]

GAFA's are somewhat specials. I was very precisely answering to a very well written story about a plant producing furniture.

As a matter of fact, if you were Ikea's CEO with a rather important war-chest (however not at the level of Apple assuredly), you would never let "live" one of your plant if all it's finished goods were given for free because nobody would want to buy it.