Had a similar thought yesterday: "Google Code and Launchpad are run by big players, yet Github is the real leader. Yet another argument against "XYZ big corp might smash us"." - http://twitter.com/clemesha/status/55400961652441088
More than in almost any other industry, in technology, the best implementation for the right segment at the right time usually wins. That "right time" might mean first-to-market, but often it doesn't. Sometimes the market needs a first-mover to familiarize people with the concept and establish the pain points with that concept, which the second- or third-mover then perfects.
As for XYZ Big Corp, it's true that they'll always have resource advantages. But they've also got resource disadvantages in the form of corporate politics, bureaucracy, prioritizations and allocations of capital and talent, and so forth. Plus, one should not underestimate the advantage that a handful of uberpassionate-bordering-on-obsessive, working-all-hours hackers will have over an equivalent handful of corporate clock-punchers assigned to a project.
Absolutely. The key point here is that you avoid being squashed by the competition by being better than the competition. Just because the competition is a big company doesn't mean that you can't be better than them.