Competitive Strategy: Strong #2 uses Open (Permeable) Play

Worth noting:
Tim’s perspective on Hadoop integration at Yahoo:
With this being the key point:

OK — but why is Yahoo!’s involvement so important? First, it indicates a kind of competitive tipping point in Web 2.0, where a large company that is a strong #2 in a space (search) realizes that open source is a great competitive weapon against their dominant competitor. It’s very much the same reason why IBM got behind Eclipse, as a way of getting competitive advantage against Sun in the Java market. (If you thought they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts rather than clear-sighted business logic, think again.) If Yahoo! is realizing that open source is an important part of their competitive strategy, you can be sure that other big Web 2.0 companies will follow.

Remember that I’ve said the winning play is permeable vs. closed business models, not about technology bits. Seems like a few other voices are starting to say the same thing.

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