You must be extremely young.
Almost every company/technology listed held a domineering lead in their respective fields for a good amount of time.
Google? LOL. If your frame of reference is that short sighted, then I'll just assume you're 12 years old and think Apple were the pioneers of the cellular world lol.
Altavista, Lycos, and Geocities were all front runners in the internet search engine biz in the mid to late 90's, long before Google stormed onto the scene.
And you know why the only 2 examples you gave are still around and going strong? Because they constantly evolve with the people and create new technologies to appease ever changing user needs. Bitcoin doesn't do that. It's protocol has evolved very little if any over the course of it's life. It does not grow with the population...it just hopes that the population adapts to it.
The bitcoin protocol is the first. And thus the most primitive of it's kind. It offers no real-world advantages compared to its successors with exception to the fact that companies are investing in it strictly because of this premise. But that is far from a guarantee of sustenance...since things move extremely quickly in the technological world, and what is here one day can just as easily be gone tomorrow and replaced by something 'better.'
After all, the same argument bitcoiners make about its benefits vs. fiat, are the same arguments that could be made for altcoin2.0 vs bitcoin.
TCP/IP is still around.
basically, all i am saying is-show me a real contender-and you might be proven right.
Right now bitcoin is supported by ~300PH of computing power. Nothing else comes close.
The technology is still very young, relatively speaking. And basically every altcoin has many more real world advantages over bitcoin.
So while bitcoin currently holds the 'popularity' crown this early in the race, I wouldn't quite hold so much confidence in that notion. The technological segment can be cruel and unforgiving.
I don't actually think that more than 80% of the people who know about bitcoin know as deep tehcnical knowledge about it to worry about an altcoin being better.
The only reason for decline is people selling in fear of losing more money due to price falling further.
Oh trust me, they will.
The only reason why it doesn't matter much now is because a great portion of transactions are done online via business purchases and exchanges and not p2p or in person. When a person is sending emergency money to a relative 3,000 miles away or wants to snipe an auction item last second, and it takes 10-15 minutes for the payment to be confirmed and credited/usable...then people will start to realize how dated the protocol really is. The only reason why it's acceptable right now is because it's not being used by the 'common consumer' but rather bitcoin believers and grassroots supporters that represent a mere microfragment of the market segment.
