What does the Skilled Occupation List have to do with this?

And why would that be?

Not everyone is wired the same way, and some of the greatest contributors to science did it out of curiosity rather than goodwill.

Personally, I think the H.L. Mencken quote sums it all up rather well.

You really gotta walk back that excessive, exuberant, irrational optimism, Sparky.

Well, there are incubators that support some shiny new thing, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram but they tend to Do One Little Thing Well, a la Unix, and then sell their soul for rock-n-roll.
But we think about IT here. There are also business in the Real World http://www.groundedcoffeeshop.com/ but both of these examples underscore your broader point, if I may radically restate it: economic activity of consequence is a top-down, not a bottom-up affair these days.

Google: The IE 6 of Internet search.

Maybe Mozilla could make a search engine and re-light the competition fire and user focus in this space. (Bing just seems to be a clone of the stagnating leader.)

I'm willing to commit to a definite maybe.
BHO owns a substantial chunk of his woes, but it's not an open-and-shut case that we'd've gotten into reform mode in the counterfactual case of a GOP administration.

Unlikely to be an equal revenue stream.

It shouldn't be about what you want, or what you think you want, but what you need. I want (need?) a search engine that will give me that.

Another thing I'd forgotten about; an increasingly common trend with top-end vehicles (not cheap pieces of shit as you claim) is integrating even MORE features from the CAN bus into the head unit, particularly climate control. This is becoming increasingly (and annoyingly) commonplace, and is starting to filter down into midrange vehicles as well.

It's only the cheap pieces of shit and high-end vehicles from a handful of makes which only hand-build cars (Koeningsegg, Spyker, etc.) where volume is too low to justify highly integrated units where you can swap a head unit and not have to jump through hoops to not lose any functionality.

Sure, in most vehicles you can either install a CAN hub or even a passive connector and get the car to run, but you will lose some of the original features and kill trade-in/resale value in the process - and for the vehicles which have jumped on the touch-screen-for-everything trend, good luck selling a car where heat/defrost/AC doesn't work.

Chrysler (including Jeep) - okay, cheap pieces of shit there, I'll grant you that
Mercedes
Newer Toyota models (including Lexus), especially the higher end models

You can get a CAN interface to bypass the radio but at risk of losing audio for turn indicators, headlamp warning, key left in ignition warning, and so forth. You may or may not also lose your steering wheel controls for the radio; some aftermarket head units and CAN interfaces can translate various makes' control codes, but some cannot, and most head units lack this integration entirely. Getting vehicles' warning tones with an aftermarket head unit is very iffy at best, so many installers take the factory head unit and relocate it so the functionality is retained, sometimes by rerouting or eliminating ductwork and shoving the radio deeper into the dash, but increasingly often by either eliminating the glove box or extending the factory wire harness and relocating the head unit to a different location, or simply installing aftermarket head units above or below the factory head unit and custom fabricating a new center console.

SAAB 9-3.

Brands which this affects:

  * BMW
  * SAAB
  * Volvo
  * Cadillac
  * Porsche

Hardly cheap pieces of shit. It's actually a more common design in higher end brands.

The cost would seem proportional to the users.
As far as running the business, just let me sharpen my AWS knives a little more. . .
Of course, in our post-capitalistic era, just having a good business plan is necessary but insufficient to protect you from Big Oligarchy and Big Government, assuming you could pry them apart with a crowbar. If you offer a viable alternative, look for "something really, really unfortunate" to arrive with an innocuous name like "Net Neutrality", or something.

Even bigger problem is cars where you cannot replace the head unit without disrupting the CAN bus or losing some functionality (like turn indicator reminders, warning tones, etc.)

I wish I could mod this comment up. There is nothing more joyful than giving your children the opportunities that you never had, and helping them accomplish their own success.

So, how much are we willing to pay as a subscription to make up the lost revenue?
Or do we just expect the vendor to eat the opportunity cost?