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?

[schon]

Compaq never had a good brand reputation to lose. They've made junk computers since day one.

Spoken like someone who doesn't know anything about Compaq besides what they see in department stores.

Compaq's business products (Deskpro line) were top-of-the-line. They were elegantly-engineered tanks that ran pretty much forever. Opening one up revealed a thing of beauty - being able to swap out expansion cards and hard drives without need of a screwdriver even to open the case, without being flimsy.

The Presario was junk, but do you judge all Fords based solely on the Pinto, all Chevys based solely on the Vega? Compaq made rock-solid business desktops and servers.

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.

Re:HP didn't make the list?

[Locke2005]

They lost sight of "the HP way" about the same time they put Carly in charge. Note to HP buying up other companies to convert yourself to a service company and compete with IBM is just a waste of money if you can't get those new divisions to stop fighting with each other and actually work together towards a common goal.

Re:HP didn't make the list?

[Dun Malg]

And then, Howard went batshit crazy, and the company went downhill. Hughes still does some pretty cool stuff, but it's nothing like that it used to be.

Hughes doesn't do anything anymore. Hughes no longer exists. My father worked for Hughes Aircraft from college graduation to retirement. The decline of Hughes Aircraft Co. had little to do with Howard going nuts. Hughes was still going full bore in the defense industry when HH died in '76. They continued to succeed until 1985, when the seeds of their destruction were sown. That's when the Feds ruled that Hughes Medical Institute, a non-profit research foundation which was essentially the "heir" to the HH fortune and owned Hughes Aircraft, had to divest themselves of the hugely profitable subsidiary to keep its non-profit status. That's when General Motors bought them and merged them with Delco Electronics to form the GM-Hughes Electronics division. At this point, Hughes was making everything from radar systems, to missiles, to satellites, to communications systems.

At any rate, GM being run by a bunch of fools and clowns, it was inevitable that the party would end. The collapse of the Soviet Union hit the defense industry pretty hard, and GM acquired General Dynamics' missile division and rolled it into Hughes. The inevitable decline was delayed by the fact that Hughes launched a profitable commercial business in '94, a satellite television business called "DirecTV"--- perhaps you've heard of it. None of this helped in the long run, though. GM was no better at operating a business sensibly then than it is now. Eventually the realized they were out of their league, and sold off the Hughes Aircraft portion of Hughes Electronics to Raytheo. The DirecTV division was sold to Rupert Murdoch. The Hughes Space and Communications division was sold to Boeing.

My father worked the last 3 years of his career as a Raytheon employee because of this. Raytheon is a company run by shitbag assholes. For decades Hughes was forced by the DoD to "second source" critical components from Raytheon. My father had years worth of stories about how the shit they'd manufacture was sloppy and not made to specs, and how it caused them interminable problems with Raytheon parts failing. When they acquired Hughes, they basically turned it into "more Raytheon". Employees were treated like shit, benefits cut to nothing, and retirees who were previously allowed to buy health insurance as part of the Hughes group plan were told to "suck it". Perhaps the world was no longer a place where a company like Hughes could exist. Perhaps only "McRaytheon" type companies can make money nowadays. All I know is that Raytheon tolerates a lot more incompetence than Hughes did, and as a result of them buying Hughes, they are now the only manufacturer of missiles in the US, and it's all done to "Raytheon qwality". Just as well, I guess. Not much air combat anymore.

So no, it really was GM that put Hughes on the chopping block, and Raytheon that finally swung the axe. The problem may have started with HH not having a will, but a bunch of Oldsmobile salesmen in $200 suits are what really killed them.

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.

Re:Here's Another

[StreetStealth]

Or how about Hyades1. Once the recipient of such moderations as "+5. Insightful" and "+5, Informative" the brand is now associated with failing to RTFA.

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.

Old modems

[Junior J. Junior III]

3Com/USRobotics should be on this list.

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.

Radio Shack

[mdsolar]

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

Re:Radio Shack

[MightyMartian]

Tandy/Radio Shack is a really sad story. From the late '70s and into the mid-80s they produced a helluva lot of computers, including the Model 100, which was pretty much the first real notebook computer (compare it to the Osbornes, where you literally packed around a monster with a CRT screen). The first *nix machine I ever worked on was a Tandy 6000 with a Motorola 68000 chip, a Z80 I/O copressor, 1mb of RAM, two 20mb hard drives and a five port RS232 card. For the time, the machine kicked some serious ass, and we were using it into the mid-1990s for the multiuser accounting software, using dumb terminals. They, like Commodore, made bad decisions, like sticking with an 8bit CPU for the CoCo3 instead of moving into the 16bit world (except with their PC clones).

Last but not least, Radio Shack made some of the best beginners programming manuals out there. I learned BASIC on a 20k MC-10 (the CoCo cousin that ran a 6803 and had a chiclet keyboard), and even wrote a PacMan-like game using semigraphics mode.

Re:Radio Shack

[tautog]

Funny Radio Shack story - stopped into the local store a few years ago to pick up some random connectors, etc. Before offering to help me find what I needed, was offered a cell phone and then informed that they have to special order everything on my list. I asked them what they DO offer and was basically told cell phones and a few cables.

My response: "So you're essentially a more expensive and less useful version of Best Buy?".

The guy gave me a foul look and I turned on my heel and left.

For the record, I worked at Radio Shack for a year or so way back when. You were required to take and pass training courses (on basic electrical theory and how to identify and match components such as resistors, capactors, etc) and failure to do so meant termination.

I refuse to even enter their stores anymore.

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".

Re:Radio Shack

[kbielefe]

I have to agree, pretty sad. I still wander in once or twice a year. Last time I went in I told them I was looking for some solder wick. The salesman went and looked, then told me they didn't have any. I looked myself anyway, and sure enough he was looking straight at it, but it was labeled desoldering braid. I still remember as a kid when I could go in for something like an LED and they would recommend a current limiting resistor. Now, I go in for solder wick and they recommend a new cell phone to go with it, and they couldn't tell a transistor from a resistor if their life depended on it.

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:IMAX seems to be slipping also

[iluvcapra]

If we're going to get into the film brands, no conversation is complete without a mention of Lucasfilm THX. Originally conceived as a quality-control system for movie sound, and having very strict technical requirements in the theater; George fired the inventor in the 90s and now they just slap the plaque on any theater that can write the check for the $100,000 licensing fee, and the THX name is stuck on cellphones and car stereos. Puke.

And don't get me started on Dolby.

To be Fair...

[clinko]

How about Slashdot?

I know, we're the converted, but think about how Gizmodo and Engadget have changed how "Tech News" is reported.

Slashdot used to be the ONLY good place to get tech news. I remember telling someone "Slashdot is like the 'What's New' of Popular Mechanics, but free!"

I wouldn't even mention slashdot now. I'm not leaving, but I don't see any reason to convert others...

Re:To be Fair...

[selven]

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

Re:To be Fair...

[mindbrane]

I took a 4 year leave from /. (you're welcome) and came back (there's little you can do about it) after having taken a look at most of the prominent alternatives. There are two outstanding reasons I returned to Slashdot. First /. is a decent tech site that has a bias toward open source. I first came here in the late 90's to learn about Linux. Secondly the fine print still reads the same: All comments are owned by the poster. Slashdot remains a place where I can see the tech world through an Open Source lens, freely post my opinions and retain ownership and responsibility for said comments. And I appreciate /. such as it is.

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.

Easy to summarize.

[Xeno man]

I'd say about half of the companies on the list were failures due to lack of vision and avoidance on making changes. If they weren't so busy trying to squeeze every buck out of their old assets and actually invested in new tech, they would still be around as the giants they once were. Now that's not true for all of them Companies like Heathkit and Napster were victims of the times. Not all markets last forever.

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).

Personal Anecdote

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I was on the phone with HP Premium Printer Support when the official announcement was made in their office that Carly was leaving.

All hell broke loose. People were screaming, crying, shouting for joy. It sounded like total pandemonium. It sounded like the celebrations of slaves suddenly freed from a cruel master.

It was nearly impossible to finish the call. Having worked under cruel/crazy/incompetent bosses before and known the joy of release when they move on, I couldn't help but be happy for them. HP may have never recovered but for at least a few minutes those poor folks had hope, God bless 'em.

Re:Personal Anecdote

[shadowbearer]

  Indeed! I had a couple support tickets open with HP at that time. In one of them the tech and I were exchanging an email two or three times every hour, trying to troubleshoot a group of networked printers; I saw the announcement in my news feed and mentioned it to the tech in my next email back, his response was along the lines of "Thank god the bitch is leaving, we're all celebrating after work!" I was transferred to another tier up a couple days later because that tech didn't have the expertise to solve the problem we were having, but the relieved and happy attitude was obvious in the calls and emails there, too.

  It seemed to me that after that there was a noticeable improvement in their tech support, especially on the phone. I hadn't been paying much attention to it at the time, but it was obvious afterward just how badly that woman screwed that company up.

  Slashdot's article was quite a fun read as well :)

  I still use HP printers exclusively at home, and recommend them to customers as well. They aren't perfect, but they are certainly among the best. My most reliable printer, a PSC 2350, has performed like a champ since I bought it new, despite having been dismantled and rebuilt a couple times to clean out enormous amounts of cat hair and assorted species of dust bunnies. Like another poster mentioned, I tend to use the raw drivers and my own apps, but I have a lot of customers who are happy with their software as well. (Hint: Don't update unless it's absolutely necessary for a bug fix).

    I've also found that overall their printers tend to be the ones that work the best with linux.

SB

 

SCO

[nattt]

surely SCO is the most tarnished?

No brand is as tarnished...

[twoallbeefpatties]

...as the GNAA. Those guys used to be everywhere.

Gutenberg

[Subm]

Well before HP printers, Gutenberg utterly dominated the printing market. For a time, virtually every printed book on the market was printed by Gutenberg.

Perhaps due to no effort whatsoever made to maintain the brand, it is associated almost exclusively with one book least popular among techies.

Now the name is associated with blatantly pirated versions of books. If its current incarnation ever eeks out a profit it will certainly be sued by the entire publishing industry.

WANG computers

[hotdiggity]

WANG was a brand that stood out proudly in the face of stiff competition.

Unfortunately, after a long period of thrusting its way into new markets, it sadly shrivelled into a limp entity that was incapable of further market penetration.