This is offtopic, but after reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung a few weeks ago, I was annoyed to read that web platform Etsy has it’s first clone in Germany. The clone will be supported with a few million dollars from Holtzbrinck ventures, which is part of the Holtzbrinck media company. Also Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube, Geni, Digg and a million other sites already have German clones, that are not only extremely similar, but sometimes even used the same code as the original site.
Currently there is already a first mover”war” within the German cloner scene. It went so far that one Twitter clone ended up being financed by the Samwer brothers while two other clones (the “slower” ones) being sold on Ebay.
Clones are not necessarily bad and I don’t condemn them at all. They probably exist in the business world for decades, but what Germany’s publishers are doing, is just wrong.
On the one hand some news editors of large publishers complaint in various articles how the Chinese industry “copies” German engineered products (e.g. cars, buses…), while at the same time the editors colleague in the interactive department copies business ideas from internet startups in a never seen before manner.
As a German expatriate, growing up with Beamers, Bosch tools, Miele vacuums… all I can say is: C’mon Germany. You can do better!
