Does anybody have an original idea?

The news today:

• Yahoo introduced a new home page design that looks an awful lot like AOL.com.
• Skype, late last night, announced you can use its free Internet telephone service to call anywhere in North America at no cost.  Within hours, AOL launched Phoneline, free local phone service for its AOL Instant Messenger users.
• AOL puts into "open beta"  AOL UnCut. Techcrunch.com nails it immediately as a clone of YouTube.  Techcrunch also said that AOL's AIMPages look like Myspace.
  

A TC commenter laments that the developers of features like video uploads, "I sometimes wonder how these companies turn a single functionality into an entire company.  Does every kid at Stanford, who completes his senior project get a VC investment with his diploma? (I went to Ohio State - we get $20 a discount tickets to Buckeye games.)" 

Business 2.0's Om Malik often says the same thing on his podcasts.  "A feature is not a company."