Writely (Google Docs) | Acquired Podcast

At the same time, Google’s incremental approach to improving Docs also reveals a dilemma that the company often faces when trying to improve its most-used products. Introducing lots of changes is appealing to designers, developers, and the tech enthusiasts like me that they serve, but often causes average users to revolt.

It's actually kind of interesting how little collaborative work is done on the Internet. I mean, we have Wikipedia—that's one of the great ones. There's obviously GitHub... There's Google Docs. You might say, 'Well that is a lot of collaborative work,' and I agree, but I think there's so much more that can be done. Why aren't there more things like... See more

However, a key risk with several of these startups is the potential lack of a long-term moat. It is difficult to read too much into it given the stage of these startups and the limited public information available but it’s not difficult to poke holes at their long term defensibility. For example:

• If a startup is built on the premise of taking base L

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