It's been more than a decade since Google and Microsoft turnedout to be rivals over market dominance; Chrome vs Explorer, Google search vs Bing, Google cloud vs Azure, Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace, Windows vs Chrome Os, the both companies topped Apple in market cap, but war and competition made them lose focus to Apple, in 2013, when they were both surpassed by Apple with $500 billion, while Google and Microsoft combined had $467 billion. It remained that way, unless for 2019 for a short time, not until this January when Google for the first time surpassed Apple with
$3.98 trillion while apple market cap is $3.76 trillion, which growth was drown to the AI race, giving google a much better dominance in the market.
This example explains the huge negative impact of competition or turning competition into rivalry or war, it eliminates focus and creates enemity in the mind, which is the creator of new ideas and knowledge, when in business build a strong edge on focus, stay active in giving the best, and abandon competition, it distracts the goals you've set and brings down the value the company once created, for focusing on a war that has no purpose or meaning. Think about this, and share your thoughts or experience.
That example explains nothing, and you are wrong for saying that such a war has no purpose, sure it does, how can you expect not to have competition in a business? That's literally impossible. No matter what kind of a business you have or are starting, you should always expect to have business rivals, and that's a normal thing. Two companies from the same industry, selling similar products, will surely have same customers most of the times, and they will have to strive to do better than the other if they want to stay ahead in the competition, and that isn't war, that is competition, and you have every right to try every tactic you can to stay ahead of your rival in the business.
I wouldn't call all this being purposeless, I would say that is what they have to do to eventually get on top, or at least beat their rivals.