Definition of "rival"

The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you […] "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.

2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, / The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]

The strenuous conflicts and alternate victories of two rival confederacies of statesmen.

1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 1, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans

But the Waverley is still the best-placed station of any British city, and gives the arriving stranger a first impression rivalled in Europe only by the exclusively watery station approach at Venice.

1941 January, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The Scottish Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 1

The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, […].

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess‎

to rival thunder in its rapid course

1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]