[mdale]

For an increasing set of product attracting attention and midshare is the product. Creator economy; open source projects that have many stars safer to use then ones that don't. AWS better to use than some small competitor because you know many others are in that same boat. "Not fired for using Microsoft" etc.

Widely used and viewed is value; less and less does a product evaluation work in isolation. So very difficult to evaluate products fairly in that sense. Something may be better but it's only in so far that your review agragation / index is a fair market for attention.

Think GitHub stars and amazon reviews for products or product hunt for new startups, or YouTube or LinkedIn views; all have their game of gathering attention / marketing that plays into products visibility and viability.

[ThrowawayR2]

The phrase was originally "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", which, ironically, did not save IBM once the cost effectiveness of alternatives was too overwhelming to ignore. The effect of mindshare isn't all it's cracked up to be.