>But do you think that free software can keep up against these giants?
On an algorithmic front, definitely. The key areas where free software is kneecapped against large corporate interests are in marketing, which free software has never been good at, and in training set gathering.
In the case of the latter, google, facebook and microsoft have a major advantage in gathering data to do things like improve accent recognition, because they don't give a shit about collecting everything you say via services like cortana to improve their voice recognition, as long as it's legal. That technique applies to a whole suite of other problems as well, unfortunately.
Don't forget UI and UX, in general. The free software pipeline has traditionally been wacky in this front, and is something that matters a lot to users.
I think the whole UX thing is overrated. People will like what they are accustomed to, and dislike what they are not accustomed to. Just look at all the flak Facebook gets when they move things around.
Or look at medical secretaries and their opinions about the new "user friendly" interfaces that replaced the keyboard driven programs of previous generations.
Supposedly there are doctors in Norway still holding on to their DOS based patient journal software. Arguably because they can operate it without taking the focus way from the conversation with the patient.
On an algorithmic front, definitely. The key areas where free software is kneecapped against large corporate interests are in marketing, which free software has never been good at, and in training set gathering.
In the case of the latter, google, facebook and microsoft have a major advantage in gathering data to do things like improve accent recognition, because they don't give a shit about collecting everything you say via services like cortana to improve their voice recognition, as long as it's legal. That technique applies to a whole suite of other problems as well, unfortunately.