The point isn't that disruption can't happen, as we know it can. The point is that is can take a lot to dislodge an entrenched product, usually more than just new features, especially rarely used new features.
As pointed out, the main driver is switching cost. Going to HN has low switching cost. Moving off Oracle has very high switching cost. I know of companies that have been actively trying to move off mainframes for 30+ years and are still paying switching costs.
Yes, this was exactly my point, and thanks for having articulated it better.
In my experience "Wow, X provides much better features than Y" works in two cases:
a) I am doing product selection, i.e. I am not using Y or anything else, but I now need to do something new and X will get my money because it is a better fit.
b) I am already using something, but switching to X has negligible cost. Like, I am tired of Evernote, I'll switch to Whatever, they even provide a webscraper that will automate migration with little effort.
So yes, especially for "a" the competitor will gobble up your (potential) new customers. But this is not exactly the most common scenario.
I understand that HN is geared mostly towards startups and SAS companies, but we shouldn't forget that the vast majority of companies were created before 2023 (or 2010 or 2000), therefore they have so much invested already in dinosaurean applicative stacks that "implementing new features faster" will not be enough to make them switch.
As pointed out, the main driver is switching cost. Going to HN has low switching cost. Moving off Oracle has very high switching cost. I know of companies that have been actively trying to move off mainframes for 30+ years and are still paying switching costs.