Everybody knows that Google and Facebook are THE number one in their respective fields. But aside from being the field’s top gun, they also have another thing in common. They were not the first one to enter into their respective fields. Before Google, there was already Yahoo (which used to be the number one search engine before). But before Yahoo, there was ArchieQuery, which was the first search engine to be developed. Facebook didn’t invent social networking. MySpace was king before Zuckerberg’s site dethroned it. And long before that, Friendster already had millions of members actively interacting with each other.

Larry Page and Sergei Brin made Google because they thought the existing search engines before didn’t produce the results they want. While they were in grad school in Stanford, they came up with the idea of a search engine that can produce better results by putting emphasis on back links. They put this idea into practice and made Google available for use by fellow students. Their idea eventually became the most widely used search engine. Now, the word “Google” even has a different meaning in everyday language. People use it to refer to something that they want to search on the net.

Mark Zuckerberg first developed Facebook for exclusive use by Harvard students. In fact, he wrote the code of the site in his dorm room. He never thought that within a short period of time it will become one of the biggest websites, and that it will also change the way people interact. Like Google, it became a household word. Now, people refer to a “friend” not only to a real life friend, but also to a friend in Facebook.

Some people think that in the world of business, it’s very important to be the first. However, that’s not always true. Aside from these two giants, there are other examples of companies that weren’t the first one but completely dominated their fields.  

They became number one because they were able to improve the idea of others. They were able to see what the existing sites failed to offer. Who knows, maybe putting a car loan calculator to your online car loan site can make a huge difference. All it takes is a little innovation and ingenuity, and not just blindly following competitors.