Of the many people who hated Microsoft during their rise to power, one of the most coherent groups were people who were mad because MS put a competitor with an arguably better product out of business.
That is in fact how FUD got into the vernacular. They would make vague promises that you couldn't quite call outright lies about having a product coming in that market, and a year later they'd put out something tepid (thereby proving they were lying about their progress earlier), but with some bulk licensing deal.
By the time the MS product came out the competitor would already be experiencing reduced sales growth because people would play wait-and-see for the MS product.
There is nothing stopping any of these folks from pulling the same trick. Having a better product will not save you. A brilliant product might, but even that's not a given.
Who is gonna play wait-and-see in this day and age? We're not in the 90's where one had to wait for the product to be announced, then built, then shipped on a CD.
If a product has lots of integrations within your company, or if you store lots of data in it which would need to be migrated to another product (e.g. a database), or if lots of people in your company need to receive training for the product, then it might make sense to wait 6 months to see what product the big player is going to come out with, rather than choosing a smaller niche vendor.
That is in fact how FUD got into the vernacular. They would make vague promises that you couldn't quite call outright lies about having a product coming in that market, and a year later they'd put out something tepid (thereby proving they were lying about their progress earlier), but with some bulk licensing deal.
By the time the MS product came out the competitor would already be experiencing reduced sales growth because people would play wait-and-see for the MS product.
There is nothing stopping any of these folks from pulling the same trick. Having a better product will not save you. A brilliant product might, but even that's not a given.