That's actually the point. Yahoo in 2005 had the financial muscle -- and an interesting starting point via Flickr's user base -- to spin up its own version of YouTube without needing to do an acquisition. Stronger Yahoo leadership would have stomached the get-started costs of an internal build-out, because of a sense of what this could become.

Yahoo just lacked the imagination and nerve necessary to see how its own assets could lead to the next big thing.

Yet Google failed to build a social network, Apple failed to build a car and Microsoft failed to muscle its way into the mobile market.

And now Bytedance beat every US competitor, including Google's YouTube, Amazon's Twitch and Facebook's Instagram with what? An app that lets you upload 10s videos.

Maybe it's not so easy.