&gt; however there was clearly demand for personal transportation and portable music players.<p>I think that makes my point further.  There is demand for <i>social networks</i><p>I&#x27;ll concede that portability may or may not be the next big thing for social networks.  Let&#x27;s speak more generally.<p>People want better social networks.  They want to connect with friends more easily.  To be honest, my Facebook feed is improving bit by bit, but it&#x27;s still not as good or interesting as it could be.  My perception is that Facebook is 100% focused on improving the feed, but without competition, we&#x27;ll never have anyone thinking outside the Facebook box.  Mark has the final say on certain strategies, and I think his vision is great, but his company would be even greater if there were another Mark.<p>Jobs and Gates fed off each other.  Their efforts to market computers to the world helped each other&#x27;s businesses grow faster than they would&#x27;ve grown alone.  By borrowing each other&#x27;s ideas, we got better products.  And their employees were constantly on their toes.  Google and Facebook are amazing companies and provide more services to their employees today than Apple and MS in the 90s.<p>However, the same energy isn&#x27;t there to improve their core products.  Google could be much better at machine translation across all languages, which is part of search, for example.  In the future, I think they will be.  Without another real competitor, they&#x27;re free to work on whatever side projects please their employees.  The core products miss out on advancements that may otherwise arrive sooner.<p>All of this is fine and I think tech will thrive regardless.  The reason I write all that is I believe in churning up ideas from the bottom that might not otherwise find support.  I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m the only one with this idea.