The most unsuccessful decisions made in the history of the IT industry

An interesting question appeared on the Quora website - users were asked to share the most unsuccessful, from their point of view, decisions made by companies related to the Internet and computers (most of them are from Silicon Valley). And although we are all “strong minds”, we can try to learn from the mistakes of others.

Myspace

MySpace was the fifth most visited site in the United States in 2005. Then the company had the opportunity to buy Facebook for $ 75 million, but the offer was rejected by MySpace founder Chris Devulf .

Since it was the most popular social network at that time, media mogul Rupert Murdoch decided to purchase it. He immediately began to pursue an aggressive monetization policy, hung the site with advertising, as a result of which the popularity of the service fell, and users switched to Facebook.

Hewlett packard

Hewlett Packard Company had the right to everything that Steve Wozniak invented, including the Apple I computer, the production of which Wozniak himself suggested that they establish them several times. However, they simply “let go” of the crazy inventor with his “toy computer”.

Ibm

IBM had the rights to manufacture the Pentium chip, but got rid of them in order to manufacture more than 486 processors.

Apple

The company sold the window interface license for Microsoft Windows 1.0, but refused to sell the license for MacOS, which Bill Gates himself offered them. MacOS could become a standard OS for personal computers - but the Apple management decided that their OS will win everyone, and therefore it makes no sense to license it.

Silicon Video Corporation

A company with the same name, later renamed Candescent Technologies, tried to make flat displays using FED technology (field emission display). They attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in their ThinCRT development, but the technology never came to production. After 13 years of research, the company closed and sold its assets to Canon. There are still no FED based displays.

Silicon graphics

One of the coolest companies of the 90s quarreled with its founder James Clark. He left the company, met Mark Andreesen, and together they created Netscape - a company that not only made the first popular browser, but also served as a catalyst for the Internet boom of the early 2000s, and earned about $ 2 billion on it.

Yahoo

In 1998, the founders of Google contacted Yahoo in search of investment in their new Internet search technology, but did not receive support. In 2000, they still saw the potential in Google, and began to use its search engine on their site, which contributed to the promotion of Google. In 2002, she could buy Google for $ 3 billion, but the deal fell through .

Netscape

For a long time, the browser was the de facto standard, and every person who launched it first got to the company's home page. But the company did not use its potential, having almost 100% of the Internet audience - at first there were only uninteresting company news on the page, and then she gave it to the then small company Yahoo.

Intel

The company refused a deal with Apple on the production of processors for the iPhone, as it underestimated the volume of proposed production and decided that it would not bring them profit . The head of the company explains: “We must remember that this was before everyone saw the iPhone and no one knew what to expect from it. Apple needed a specific chip, they had their own non-negotiable price, and it was lower than our predicted value. As a result, it turned out that the cost was incorrectly predicted, and the volume of production was a couple of orders higher than expected. ”

Groupon

Andrew Mason declined the offer to sell his service to Google for $ 6 billion. Instead, he decided to go public, raised $ 700 million in stock sales. For some time, the company was valued at $ 12 billion, but then the company did not fulfill its promises to shareholders and its value quickly went down.

Atari

Company founder Nolan Bushnel, who was one of the first Steve Jobs bosses, could own a third of Apple, investing only $ 50,000 at the beginning. The current value of the company is estimated at more than $ 400 billion.

Xerox

The Xerox PARC research lab invented Ethernet, GUIs, WYSIWYG editors, object-oriented programming, and laser printing — all of which we still use. But for some reason they didn’t use anything except printers, copiers and cartridges.

Excite

The company, which opened a web portal in 1995, rejected an offer by the Google founders to purchase their search engine in 1999 for $ 1 million, and even fired its investment employee , who bargained with Brin and Page for $ 750,000.

Kodak

The first digital camera was created in the bowels of the company in 1975. But out of fear that it would supplant their film business, they did not deal with this technology until the mid-90s. When they realized their mistake, it was already too late .