Frenemy

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Frenemy refers to a company that can be both a partner (customer, vendor, etc.) and a competitor at the same time. These type of relationships grow more common in times of great change and make for uneasy relations.

More generally, frenemy also refers to two opposing parties, be it in personal relationships or in large scale interaction between nations, organizations, political parties, etc., that are mutually beneficial, yet are at odds to be mutually destructive.

For example, Sir Martin Sorrell said he counts Google as a frenemy of WPP, the ad agency empire that he built.^[1] On one hand Google offers WPP a chance to buy cutting edge interactive ads for its clients. One the other hand, Google makes no secret of its intentions to allow anyone to buy ads for themselves, which could disintermediate ad agencies.

Strategies for dealing with frenemies vary. Sorrell said at UBS Media Week's conference that he wants WPP to be Google's biggest customer, but that he knows Google sees him as competition.^[2] Microsoft climbed to greatness on IBM's back, but had to go to great lengths to appease its much larger partner. Microsoft called this practice "riding the bear".^[3] Similar relationships existed between PayPal and eBay (the latter of which acquired the former after unsuccessfully competing) and YouTube and MySpace.

Frenemy has also been used by some scholars of International Relations to refer to countries that are both allies and enemies. Key frenemies of the United States include Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and China.

[edit] In popular culture

Frenemies was used in the popular New Radicals song, You Get What You Give - released on April 20, 1999. The word was further popularized when used as the title of an episode in the HBO series, Sex and the City episode #46 October 1, 2000 Frenemies. On February 13, 2007, comedian Stephen Colbert quoted the word frenemy on his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report during his segment "The Wørd." He used the word to describe the foreign policy between the United States and China, saying that the United States is friends with China as far as the "invisible hand of the market," but enemies as the two nations are widely considered to be international rivals in military power. He then hosted an interview with New York Times editor Sheryl WuDunn, author of the book China Wakes, to discuss whether or not China is a "friend, enemy or frenemy" to the United States.