[philipnee]

i argue that most ideas aren't necessary novel, so stealing idea isn't necessary bad.... e.g. i don't think google search was entirely novel, but was well executed.

honestly - meta has built quite a lot of cool things, but c-suite is probably to be blamed for what's going on today.

[wjeje]

No the strategy of having a professional looking social space in the web, specifically focused on college folks solely was novel - this is what he stole and without this it wouldn’t have gotten to the place of success it is today. Knowing about the technology is no good without a solid strategy - with a solid strategy anyone can raise the funding to go build it. It’s easy to know what to build when you have a vision specifically of what you’re building into.

Nobody else has this targeted focus.

[degamad]

Search was not novel, but PageRank was novel.

[philipnee]

was it actually? I don't know the full technical behind this but wiki does suggest: "A search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services, designed by Robin Li in 1996, developed a strategy for site-scoring and page-ranking.."

This is before Google.

[wjeje]

Correct

[subpixel]

Stealing an idea is different from lying to people in order to steal their actual business, which is more like what Zuckerberg did.