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Comment by 93po | Hacker News Reader

as far as i can tell there are a million sodas that are extremely close to coca cola and coca cola is still doing just fine

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Getting off topic, there's an interesting This American Life story about the Coca Cola formula, and why there are many extremely close formulas, but no exact replicas.

[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/427/original-recipe

I think if the extremely close replicas ever threatened Coke's existence, they would sue. Especially if a former employee started it. I think trade secret protection is the only thing that enables a company to operate. Especially small companies, otherwise only large companies can operate. Any employee with a rich uncle can finish the small company off without this protection.

My head canon of the secret recipe is the Kung Fu Panda ending.

Protagonist gets to open the vault of secret formula after decades working their way to the top. Inside is a Coke label with the ingredients part unprinted.

It was always the brand.

Brand takes money to build. IF an employee took the secret to their rich uncle when coke was small, we would not be talking about Coke. Whatever small the formula was.

That’s my whole point. They are not using Coke’s formula

But they are using functionally equivalent formulas and Coke is still fine.

if coke did not have deep pockets, it would have gone under without this protection.

there are a million different manufacturers of, for example, hot dogs, and those hot dogs basically taste all the same to everyone, and yet they're all making basically identical hotdogs and doing fine

But none of them would end up becoming Coca Cola. At least not just by selling hot dogs.

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