I just read a post :http://mashable.com/2010/11/01/microsoft-wants-you-to-manage-your-gmail-from-your-hotmail/
I often see many idea's are copied from one competitor to another. I can understand if someone copies must have feature in their product but many times these big players like google, oracle, MSFT are just copying things from one another to compete but not delivering creative addons.
If you are an entrepreneur or a member of product management team what would you call this strategy ?
Creativity? No. It is just like any other industry where you have to match the base feature set that people demand and then from there you sale based on your uniqueness (which could be creative add-ons, pricing, or branding).