The Twelve Most Tarnished Brands In Tech

harrymcc writes "Polaroid, Netscape, CompuServe, Westinghouse, Heathkit — these were once among the most respected names in the technology business. They're still around, but what's happened to them is just plain sad. I took a look at the tragic fates of a dozen mighty brands that have, in one way or another, fallen on hard times."

Comments

HP didn't make the list?

[Ihlosi]

Odd. They lost the HP way a long time ago.

Re:HP didn't make the list?

[dissy]

Compaq never had a good brand reputation to lose. They've made junk computers since day one. HP at least used to have a reputation as the best maker of printers - they still make good printers, but now I mostly think of them as the makers of the worst computers.

You do realize of course that the very computer you are using to bash Compaq would not be in existence if it wasn't for Compaq, right?

Nor would the computer of the person that modded you insightful :P

They were the ones that clean room reverse engineered the IBM PC BIOS that every computer from the 80s until just a couple years ago makes use of. Even the past couple years, MOST "PC compatible" systems sold today still contain that IBM PC BIOS.

Compaq created and sold the first 100% IBM PC compatible computers, and that was one of the driving forces that turned the PC hobby into the PC industry it is today.

HP

[joeflies]

When you say HP, the first words that comes to mind is innovation and great engineering. However you look at the past 10 years and HP has done surprisingly little in innovation or great engineering, and has not been creating market changing technology. They've gotten stuck building pcs and selling printer ink because that's the safe way to make money.

I don't know whether it was the compaq acquisition or the carly regime that made HP soft,. Maybe the HP name hasn't fallen and it's not tarnished as much as some of the other names on the list, but the company behind the brand isn't what it used to be.

Re:HP

[tibman]

The first thing that comes to my mind is huge bloated printer drivers that are constantly updating.

Re:HP

[TheRealFixer]

I think most people would blame Carly Fiorina. She effectively took HP out of the hands of the engineers who made the company great, and put it squarely into the hands the shareholders who were concerned only with short-term stock price during the dotcom bubble. She spurred a massive shift in culture that killed off the innovation that they were famous for, obliterated morale throughout the company, and generally made it an undesirable place to work. The Compaq acquisition was just one aspect of her failure.

Re:HP

[japhering]

I think most people would blame Carly Fiorina. She effectively took HP out of the hands of the engineers who made the company great, and put it squarely into the hands the shareholders who were concerned only with short-term stock price during the dotcom bubble. She spurred a massive shift in culture that killed off the innovation that they were famous for, obliterated morale throughout the company, and generally made it an undesirable place to work. The Compaq acquisition was just one aspect of her failure.

sarcasm on

Isn't that the function of Great CEOs... first drive the company into the ground will getting multi-million dollar bonus for cost reductions and stock value, then sell it to some hedge fund at a profit of 2 or 3x the share price for all share holders, which always includes the hedge fund paying the execs to exercise their options on 10s of millions of shares, thus increasing, yet again, shareholder value. Ah..the bright side of capitalism

sarcasm off

Seriously, so many at the Executive level haven't got a clue about what their company does and to make up for it simply rely on what the bean counters are telling them.

Re:HP

[WaywardGeek]

She wasn't the only one. I joined HP in 1988, and the job was horible. Donuts on Friday disapeared the week I arrived. the "HP Way" was being scuttled. I could only take it a year and a half, and then I moved on to more intresting work. The problem was that David Packard had retired from the board and no longer guided the company. It got so bad, he came out of retirement a couple years later to put HP back on track. When he passed away, there was no way to replace him. Stockholders always lean towards the likes of Carly Florina, for the reasons already described - short-term profits. It takes an genius evangelist with nearly unlimited power to keep a company great. Take a look at what's happening at Microsoft since Bill stepped back, and how the stock market follows Steve Job's health.

Anyway, I veiw all those famous brands mentioned in TFA quite differently. What they have in common is that they have faded, but that's all. Heathkit is a brand spoken even today in awe of what they did for America. Polorooid revolutionized film based photography, and faded into obscurity when their strong leadership faded. Westinghouse faded through conglomeration. What do they make now? Coffee or nuclear reactors? Netscape killed themselves, through incredible stupid and evil strategy - make the Internet so complicated that only Microsoft and Netscape could offer functional browsers... someone should be shot.

I reject the idea that a company the dies with it's market has failed. Sun Microsystems is the most amazing workstation vendor in history. They gave the world technologies that will benefit the world for generations. Just because my cell phone has more power than a 1990-vintage workstation doesn't make Sun less great. These are brands to be celebrated for what they did in their industry, not to be morned when their industry passes into history.

Diebold?

[phantomfive]

Any such list that doesn't include Diebold is lacking. Once a well respected manufacturer of safes, vaults, and eventually ATM machines, they now are known for creating voting machines that can't count, and in some cases have shown evidence of maliciousness in subverting the democratic process. At worst they are guilty of treason, at best they are guilty of selling useless and harmful junk. At least Microsoft at their worst is entertaining (Bob, Clippy); Diebold is disgusting.

Re:Diebold?

[Volante3192]

They're only known for making crappy voting machines on this site.

If some news outlet actually did a hard hitting expose on them, maybe, MAYBE, they'd fall from grace.

Radio Shack

[mdsolar]

Junk products and won't honor extended warranties they sell.

Re:Radio Shack

[Thud457]

You know they've run out of ideas and swirling around the drain when they think it's a good idea to change the name they've been using for 50 years.

Now they want to be called "The Shack".

Where would 3d gaming be without...

[rjejr]

3dfx?

IMAX seems to be slipping also

[Trepidity]

It used to stand unambiguously for large-format filming (49 x 70 mm per frame), projected on large screens (around 53 x 72 ft). There were some variations, like the projection on a concave screen of OmniMAX (now IMAX Dome), but the general brand made sense. IMAX meant high-resolution film, projected on large screens.

But for presumably commercial reasons related to a deal with theatre chain AMC, a large portion of theatres currently advertising "IMAX" films are actually projecting "IMAX Digital", a not-very-closely-related digital projection format. Film v. digital in theory I don't care much about, but the entire brand of IMAX=big is dispensed with with IMAX Digital's much smaller 28x58-ft screens. The digital projectors (dual 2K resolution projectors) also don't seem to be of sufficient resolution to match the quality of a 49x70mm film projector. As a result, it's not clear IMAX means a lot as a brand anymore, since any given theatre might well have a mostly normal sized screen and a not particularly high-resolution projector.

Re:Old modems

[Xiaran]

Also Borland. Many programmer out there like me cut their teeth using Borland Pascal/C/C++.... then we went thru a brief optimism with Delphi... then the insane Inprise name change... then a long spiral into insignificance. RIP Borland.

No Novell?

[Salo2112]

No Novell? They used to own the LAN, and now they feed off MS scraps....

digital

[tengu1sd]

Digital Equipment Corp, DEC, digital These folks started making test equipment, rivaled IBM when the PDP and VAX systems roamed the data centers. Their customer support was a pleasure to deal with. The only time a DEC field service engineer ever told me they didn't have a part in town, he told me it was coming in on a 2:00 pm flight and he'd be at my door by 3:00. A series of management by accountants slowly dissolved the company into take over bait. Despite making quality products they faded away. The low bidder trumps all.

Re:To be Fair...

[selven]

This is not a news site. This is a discussion site. And that's the way I like it.

Adobe

[moosesocks]

Might not quite be there yet, but it's well on its way.

From the abominable performance/security of the Flash player to the ever-increasing bloat of Photoshop, Adobe's users are pretty much fed up with the company.

At one point, it would have been heresy to criticize Photoshop. Now the design community is practically screaming for a replacement. (It's twice as bad if you're a mac user. Nobody's quite sure what prompted the Apple/Adobe divorce, but it's been ugly)

Silicon Graphics

[Rob Riggs]

SGI should be on that list. It was amazing to watch their death spiral in the mid-late 90s. That brand is way more tarnished than Napster (which didn't have much of a brand to tarnish).

SCO

[nattt]

surely SCO is the most tarnished?