[hnick]

> These companies achieve growth and put pressure on the competition by offering their services below the real cost that would be needed to achieve profit, hence driving huge share price growth

Which I find weird, if I sell fruit at a loss to run a local competitor out of business as a major supermarket it's illegal predatory pricing (or at least was when I was growing up), yet do it to an entire industry and it's fine. Maybe this is just one of those US exception things.

Missing (or implied) by your list is that incumbents are not an all-or-nothing gamble based on other people's money, so are reluctant to engage in such tactics themselves and will suffer for it.

[handmodel]

I don't think this covers all of this - but I feel like the reason it could never be investigated is that most of these things are only unprofitable because of the administration. Not on a per item basis.

Netflix may lose money on their show but clearly by giving you a month free and then charging just $12 a month they are making money on that unit. AirBNB is making money on each additional rental they do even if historically that didnt cover all marketing and tech.

For a store selling berries if they buy it for $3 and sell it for $2 then it is more tangible (though Im sure today they could just call it marketing)

[hnick]

I guess that makes sense and is one consequence of moving so many things to an abstract 'service' model. Many services are essentially free to provide - until you count all the other overheads any business also has to pay for. It's not as simple as buying and selling berries like you say.