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Behold! the once and future most inept tech company of all time by ferujkll sdff
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Behold! the once and future most inept tech company of all time |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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In the battle for the title of Most Inept Tech Company, thecompetition is fierce. There's of course Yahoo , which has been a contender since the mid-2000s when then-CEOTerry Semel tried to turn it into an online Hollywood studio beforedraining it of $300-plus million in salary. The soap opera thereshows no sign of abating, with Resumegate still in full throttle as I write this. There's MySpace , the one-time market-defining social network that got bought byRupert Murdoch for $580 million and sold by him six years later for $35 million . The new owners just settled with the FTC this week after its Fox forebears lied about sharing its users' personalinformation with advertisers.
(A Rupert Murdoch company caught in a lie ? Who'd have thunk it?) It's a strong contender too. Microsoft deserves a nod here for its many failed attempts toconvince the world that Windows really is the most bestest operating system of all time . The trouble with the honor is that Microsoft is just too big of amoneymaking monolith. It's like a millipede; every time it shootsitself in the foot, it grows another one.
I think for pure wacky off-the-wall high-tech hijinks, though, thewinner has to be AOL. Time and time again, AOL has astounded all ofus by proving how brain-dead a multi-billion-dollar company can be.Take its $850 million purchase of U.K. social network Bebo , later sold for less than $10 million and a lifetime supply ofJujubes. Or the time one of its engineers decided to dump the "anonymized" search histories for 650,000 users online , just for fun -- only to find out they weren't as anonymous asthey thought. Remember Seed, the "open content submission platform"that was going to revolutionize online journalism? Neither does anyone else.
Or even just the name and logo changes through the years -- from America Online to AOL to Aol. -- as if people would somehow forget this was the same companythat tried to stuff the world's landfills with 10 trillion freeCDs. AOL is still going strong , and by that I mean it is just as laughable as ever. The exampledu jour: According to a report in Pando Daily , AOL is now looking for a buyer for TechCrunch and Engadget, twoof the big tech blogs it purchased in one of its many pathetic attempts to be relevant to the peoplewho don't still use dial-up modems to reach the InterWebs.
(Also:Suck on that, MG Siegler .) The asking price for the combined AOL tech package? Allegedly acool $70 million, or $10 million more than the original purchaseprice. But I bet they'd settle for $70 and a personally autographedcopy of the Steve Jobs biography. That's what I'm planning tooffer. There's even a rumor that -- lord help us -- Michael Arrington might swoop back in to purchase the company back from AOL and savethe day, a la Steve Jobs.
Only in Arrington's case, it would bemore like Steve Case. Or maybe Steve Carell. Of course Pando Daily is one of the mushrooms that sprouted fromthe spores of the old TechCrunch. Considering its pedigree, Iwouldn't put a whole lot of stock in any of its anonymousunconfirmed reports. We've been down that road before.
Still, it sure does sound like the old AOL. Nice to think howdespite the tech world is changing at a dizzying pace, some thingsalways remain the same. Update: After this item posted, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told Ad Age thatTechCrunch, et al are not for sale . TechCrunch's own Alexis Tsotsis and Eric Eldon chided their former colleagues at Pando Daily thusly : "We heard the rumors, but didn t publish them.
It s actuallyamazing how much b******t information/spin is out there (so becareful what you believe)." TechCrunch not publishing a BS rumor? My, times have changed. Who do you think is the most inept tech company of all time?Nominate your candidates below or email me: . This article, " Behold! The once and future most inept tech company of all time ," was originally published at InfoWorld.com . Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X.
Cringely's Notes from the Field blog , and subscribe to Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter . I am Sound Cards writer, reports some information about reflective pavement markers , xenon white bulbs.
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