[hudibras]

Both Japan and Korea used to have cheaper labor costs and they used that advantage along with manufacturing improvements to maintain their industries to the present day through economies of scale and lack of competition from other countries (once they've been driven out of the industry, like the U.S. and Greece).

It's roughly analogous as if the rise of Honda and Toyota in the 1960s ran all the U.S. car manufacturers out of business.

[anigbrowl]

Good-sounding theory, but I can't help noticing the continued existence of several US car manufacturers, even if they've been through bankruptcy proceedings along the way.

[Cthulhu_]

They've always been rescued / bailed out (IIRC) by the US government whenever they were on the verge of collapse - they're pretty big employers (direct and indirect), and I'm pretty sure it's also a matter of pride for the US ('Murca, yeah!). I somehow doubt the US government would be as inclined to bail out, for example, Google or another major tech company if they got into trouble.

On the other hand, there's plenty of competing companies that could bail out / buy (parts of) Google (or some other company) if they got into trouble - see MySpace and Digg and major web companies like that that became obsolete and effectively went out of business.