Dearly Departed — Companies and Products That Didn't Make It

Esther Schindler writes "Some products just didn't deserve to die. But they did, because the companies made bad business decisions. Dearly Departed, revisits several favorites — from minicomputers to software utilities — and mourns the best and brightest that died an untimely death. What companies or products would you add? Which of them deserved to go?"

Comments

quick summary

[call -151]

Quick list for those who don't care to click through one per page for 19 pages:

DEC, Tandem, Apollo, Borland, Amiga, Commodore, Ashton-Tate, Fox, Central Point Software, Quarterdeck, Gould, Infocom, Sequent, Poquet,
Taligent, Word Perfect, Lotus, and Compuserve are the "dearly departed"

I can't comment much on the PC-heavy end of the list, but DEC stands out to me as the one
which least deserved to die. DEC Western Research Lab was a fantastic place with a great deal of innovation and freedom, and
watching it shrivel and die was painful.

Re:quick summary

[frdmfghtr]

Or try reading the printable version.

Re:quick summary

[rs79]

"DEC Western Research Lab was a fantastic place with a great deal of innovation and freedom, and
watching it shrivel and die was painful."

What he said. The firewall was born there as well as the www search engine.

About 8 or so years ago a few of us got calls from the white house - Ira Magazner, Clintons senior science advisor wanted to meet with all players in the domain name mess (to stab us in the back it turns out) and Brian Reid was one of those people. He was director of the NSL at DEC ("decwrl").

The day before I got an email saying he couldn't come and that Compaq had bought Dec and he wasn't sure he'd even have a job. I asked how this could even be possible and his reply stuck in my mind quite firmly: "Compaq didn't get enough money to buy Dec by being innovative".

Re:quick summary

[maxwell demon]

Ok, you named the first of the items from the top ten of lame top ten lists on Slashdot. So what are the other nine items? :-)

Re:quick summary

[rs79]

"Forgive me, but just about every PC with VGA or better had better graphics than the Amiga 1000"

In the day, that is when the Amiga first came out, your PC graphics choices were CGA or the then brand new EGA that gave you 16 colors.

IBM did have a PGC ("Professional graphics controller") that would do 640x480 by 24 but. It was $2500 and was two cards. I saw exactly one in the wild.

It was a few years before VGA came out. In the day the Amiga was the best bang for your graphics buck. Never mind the ability to sync to NTSC explained elsewhere here. And the first VGA's were no screaming hell. It took PC's a number of years to catch up.

To this day no computer can pull a window from background to foreground as fast at the Amiga could then.

Netscape?

[eldavojohn]

Seems to be primarily concerned wtih acquisitions that caused the death of companies. What about the acquisition and death of Netscape? I don't think it deserved to die and it was pretty much decided in multiple settlements that Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows destroyed any chance Netscape had.

I've personally never used their old products but, you know, I do use Mozilla and it's derivatives and it's a fine browser. Unfortunate they didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell with Microsoft's actions.

Webvan

[KingSkippus]

What companies or products would you add?

That's easy: Webvan.

I loved Webvan. My friends loved Webvan. To this day, I think it was one of the best ideas to come out of the dot-com era, even though it was one of the first companies to go under when the bubble burst.

It is such a shame that they're gone, and the day I heard they were closing up shop (or technically, warehouse, I suppose) was a sad day indeed. Going to the grocery store is such a hassle, and I gladly paid the premium for the convenience.

I still think that the idea is valid, and if it were done right, would be a multibillion-dollar industry. Whoever takes up the cause now, though, would have to fight not only the trials and tribulations of starting a new business, but the legacy of the spectacular failure of Webvan before it.

What a shame. I can't believe that it's been six years since their demise.

several paragraphs of content

[everphilski]

spread across 19 pages DESERVES TO DIE!!!

Re:I'm drowning in page hits!

[LiquidCoooled]

There is nothing

Re:I'm drowning in page hits!

[LiquidCoooled]

wrong with the format

i got one

[Paktu]

Sega Dreamcast, anyone?

Thank the Sony PR machine for that one, folks.

but i thought that all non-tech staff were useless

[Anonymous Coward]

as i have learned from reading slashdot, dilbert, and hanging out in the 'linux community', all non-tech staff at a corporation are useless dead weight, hangers on with dragging knuckles and pea sized brains. if only they could be eliminated, society would become a technological utopia. marketing, sales, management, HR, and so forth, are all worthless wastes of time.

and yet, here you come, now telling me that marketing, sales, and management are somehow 'important' and should be payed 'attention to'?

hogwash. we all know that the perfect corporation would make products that we give away for free, have no management, HR, marketing, sales, or customer service staff, and uhm. yeah. we could all live off our wives or in our parents basement.

i for one, will never abandon the True Software view of reality.

Re:I'm drowning in page hits!

[LiquidCoooled]

if you get paid.

Re:I'm drowning in page hits!

[LiquidCoooled]

Burma Shave!

PROTIP: How to avoid 20 pages of click-through ads

[brouski]

Find the "Printable Version" button on the first page. Condenses everything into one page.

Most of these "news" sites have one.

Add Another One

[NotFamous]

Company: Slashdot

Born: 1841

Died: 2007 (purchased by Microsoft)

Cause of Death: After Taco's death, his 6 year-old nephew took over the site. Most of the articles were about farts and dodgeball. Popularity went through the roof, but the kid forgot to renew the domain. Microsoft bought it and turned it into a site where people could post tributes to Windows Genuine Advantage.

Founder: Taco Bell

Most well-known product(s): Ascii art

Why we miss them: Because Digg was just bought by the Microsofties

Lasting image/quote: "Repost"

Re:DEC did their best to fail

[Kenshin]

By the time Robert Palmer took over, it was not clear to anyone at the time that DEC would ever again be relevant.

But DEC was simply irresistible!

Re:DEC did their best to fail

[jollyreaper]

By the time Robert Palmer took over, it was not clear to anyone at the time that DEC would ever again be relevant. But DEC was simply irresistible! It's so fine, there's no telling where the market went.

Re:Link to single page

[Hooya]

> ad-laden? Bin-laden's brother?

No, bin-laden's brother would have to be src-laden.