Site note - VRBO is owned by Expedia through its acquisition of HomeAway. Just last year Expedia consolidated it's homeaway/vrbo products into just VRBo and noticed the experience got significantly better (Booked twice though them for large groups in the last 6 months)

VRBO was Airbnb years before Airbnb decided to take their business model and add white-collar crime on top. Just like computer-dispatched car services existed for decades prior to Uber.

Not quite. VRBO was (and I guess mostly still is) focused on vacation rentals in traditional vacation destinations (beaches, ski resorts, etc.), and even before that there were of course local property-manager managed rentals for decades.

AirBnB was originally about shared rentals in urban destinations. Of course they both grew to overlap in a lot of areas, but AirBnB had a huge advantage in that their business model was much better suited (renters paid a fee for each booking, while VRBO had owners pay a subscription fee) to a Google AdWords dominated world.

Right, VRBO focused on vacation rentals, i.e. places where short-term stays are welcome, customary, and legal. AirBnB decided to apply the same model in cities were the practice is unwelcome, novel, and unlawful.