Can someone please clarify the expression「似たようなもの」for me?
I've seen it many times and always instinctively read it as meaning "something which is almost the same". For example, if it was in a sentence by itself followed by "〜だろう" or such I'd translate it as the English (slang?) expression, "same difference."

But for some reason I saw it just now and got paranoid that I was mis-reading it all this time. To take the words literally, perhaps the emphasis is strongly on the appearance, and even if unsuperficially the thing is totally different, it can still be 似たようなもの.

What do you think?