The 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Decade

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TIME has posted a list of the ten biggest tech failures of the last decade. YouTube, Vista, HD DVD and Segway all made the list. So let’s hear it, what made the list that shouldn’t have and what should be on the list but isn’t?

To make the list, a product had to be widely recognized and widely available to customers. It had to be aimed at a large global market. It had to be technologically equal to or superior to its competition. It had to be a product or new company that had the possibility of bringing in billions of dollars in revenue based on the sales of similar or competing products. Finally, it had to clearly miss the mark of living up to the potential that its creators expected, and that the public and press were lead to believe was possible.
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Almost every product on this list is still being sold and used, but somehow they are "tech failures?"

Gateway, Sirius XM, and YouTube aren't even tech failures. They are just poor business decisions. Calling the Zune a "failure" on its second generation compared to the current iPod is like calling the iPod a failure on its second generation compared to CD player sales.

List fail.
 
Holy shit! Talk about blatant lying to your readers

Vista was created to improve the security of the most widely used PC operating system in the world. The securities features were not much better than the previous versions of Windows based on most reviews of the software. Vista was also not compatible with a number of older PCs which limited the number of users who were likely to upgrade from the earlier version of Windows, known as XP. Many analysts claim that Vista also ran more slowly on PCs than XP.
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As for Gateway, I've always believed their biggest failure resulted from selling out to eMachine. Even your average customers avoid eMachines over HP and Dell brands.

HD-DVD failed, yeah I'll agree with that. But it only failed in name. The technology was sound, but the studios were retarded and went Blu-ray. Ah well.

I'm not sure what to think of YouTube though. I use it a lot, so I like it. But the article points out that just because it's popular and works, doesn't make it a success. They're hurting for a revenue.

I disagree with Microsoft Zune being a failure. You might as well call Creative Nomad or Sony Walkman a failure. Why single Microsoft out? Just because iPod sells the most mp3 player doesn't mean everyone else is a failure. I see a lot of Microsoft hate going on here.
 
That article is chock full of fail.
Fail in content, fail in one page at a time design as well.

FAIL ABOUNDS
 
No PS3?

Sony is losing their shirt on it and mine just collects dust since Netflix jacked up their Blu-ray prices.
 
Another useless and highly speculative look at the past of technology.

Tech journalism is nothing but sensationalism these days and its beyond useless or intelligent. I just don't bother much with this stuff anymore. It's a waste of time.
 
I think they define failure by how much money the product made (or lost, in these cases). So, this is more of a list of "high profile money losers".
 
Not really tech failures more like business or marketing failures. Most of the items on the list were expected to do well and were hyped a lot. How they failed is they did not live up to the expectations.
Nothing wrong with the tech.
 
why is it that whenever time or newsweek or any massive news agency covers technology it is completely filled with useless info that is almost always wrong or out of date? :confused:

it's like they don't care to do their own research, just write whatever they find in the first few google results
 
Should not be on the list:

Vista - I dont' even want to go there
Gateway - Sold great at one point, refocused market
Vonage - Still sells great, one of the biggest out there
You Tube - It's name is known globally and no site comes close
XM/Sirrus - Sells great, company not doing so well, I wouldn't call it a failure, rather a feat
Zune - Name recognition, hardly a failure
Palm - Sold like hot cakes, all good things comes to an end



Should be on the list:

HDDVD - Well it lost
Irriduim - Well they shut down before even being able to do anything
Segway - Supposed to revolutionized and turned out to be overpriced



Should have been on the list:

DNF
Circuit City
CompUSA
 
remember it's cool to hate microsoft now. Let them have their laughs up to the win 7 launch and the zune hd.
 
Manaknight said:
remember it's cool to hate microsoft now. Let them have their laughs up to the win 7 launch and the zune hd.
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I think you meant, "it's cool to hate microsoft again." Thanks a lot John Hodgman. Just what we need, to turn today's kids into another gaggle of pseudo-hipster Gen-X clones. Ugh.
 
and this is why i hate time magazine now. they just spout pop culture bullshit and have no valid information or even some intelligent opinions to back anything up.
 
Seelenlos said:
Not really tech failures more like business or marketing failures. Most of the items on the list were expected to do well and were hyped a lot. How they failed is they did not live up to the expectations.
Nothing wrong with the tech.
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QFT. That's pretty much exactly what I thought as I read this article.
 
Vista definitely in the beginning deserves to be there 100%, it's better now but not nearly as good as 7 is even in beta not to mention XP being so old but still very usable in nearly everyway.
 
KayossZero said:
Vista definitely in the beginning deserves to be there 100%, it's better now but not nearly as good as 7 is even in beta not to mention XP being so old but still very usable in nearly everyway.
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Ugh, you mean it deserves to be in there if you believed the FUD that was created probably by this very same journalist, then yeah maybe.
 
Vista flopped, end of story. Microsoft is sweeping it under the rug and trying to mend that black eye with Win7.

Zune never lived up to expectations, Microsoft and MS fanbois alike expected it to put the iPod to shame. It failed.
 
bonsai said:
Vista flopped, end of story. Microsoft is sweeping it under the rug and trying to mend that black eye with Win7.

Zune never lived up to expectations, Microsoft and MS fanbois alike expected it to put the iPod to shame. It failed.
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If we disagree with you, we're automatically fanboys? How about I label you as a pisspoor computer user who couldn't get his computer up and running properly? Based on your endless bashing of Vista or Microsoft in general, I'd chose the latter.
 
OMG before I even clicked the link, I said to myself "Vista...."

Vista is in every "top blablabla tech failures" article. I'm not sure I should go on past page 1 of the article...isn't Time the publisher who has posted the same stuff in their "success" articles as well as their "fail" articles?

Morons.
 
The Xbox & Xbox 360 should have been on there also. It's lost billions of dollars; it's financial failure would have bankrupted almost any other company. The 360 is also the most unreliable console ever made.
 
bonsai said:
Vista flopped, end of story. Microsoft is sweeping it under the rug and trying to mend that black eye with Win7.

Zune never lived up to expectations, Microsoft and MS fanbois alike expected it to put the iPod to shame. It failed.
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lol

BladeVenom said:
The Xbox & Xbox 360 should have been on there also. It's lost billions of dollars; it's financial failure would have bankrupted almost any other company. The 360 is also the most unreliable console ever made.
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I don't think they should be on there. Yes MS ate costs that most companies could not afford, but over all they are doing good with the console. It's not just the console sales, its everything relating directly to the console. The console is also a great console, so I wouldn't constitute that as a failure.
 
I have a Zune and use Vista everyday on my Gateway laptop and have a Palm phone. Guess I fail.
 
Azhar said:
If we disagree with you, we're automatically fanboys? How about I label you as a pisspoor computer user who couldn't get his computer up and running properly? Based on your endless bashing of Vista or Microsoft in general, I'd chose the latter.
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QFT.

I honestly don't understand all of the hate for Vista. When it first came out, ok, sure, but the issues were quickly resolved, yet Vista seems doomed to retain this black mark for eternity. Have you Vista-haters actually even used Vista? I find it to be just as good, if not better than XP. My only complaint is that it's kind of a resource hog compared to XP, but usually, if you're going to be a serious gamer, you'd have more than sufficient hardware, and if you're just a random, average end user, you probably aren't going to care about that anyway, and most hardware less than 5 years old is more than enough to run it.
 
A large amount of articles these days are written based upon reinforcing what the read already "wants to believe". Reporting the truth or something new and interesting is not profitable.
 
Trepidati0n said:
A large amount of articles these days are written based upon reinforcing what the read already "wants to believe". Reporting the truth or something new and interesting is not profitable.
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QFT.

Indeed, think about some of the stuff in this article that "failed". Vista is the second most widely deployed computer OS in human history, behind XP. So Vista as a failure has done better than ALL OTHER DESKTOP OS'ES combined.

Sure Vista had its problems and its still doing better than OS X and Linux. Would we be saying that OS X was a failure if it were that widely deployed? Obviously not.

At any rate, I do think that 2010 and this upcoming generation of Microsoft technologies will be critical for the companies long term PR health as much as its financial health.

Windows 7 needs to kick ass which it looks like it will. Windows Mobile 7 needs to kick ass and that is a big question mark. The Zune HD/Zune Phone/Zune Mobile Game device whatever the hell that gets released needs to KICK ASS!
 
How about iPhone... ? Great business/marketing success but "tech" failure? Oh wait... their definition of "tech" failure IS business/marketing failure. My bad...

I define Cherry Buzz Potatoes to be things that lack useful features that competitors have, but look pretty and sell like hot cakes...

Let's make a list of the top 10 Cherry Buzz Potatoes!!
 
Vista definitely does deserve to be on that list...

sure it is a good operating system and all... but vista brought with it a new wave of Microsoft hate and bad will that really did hurt the company.....
 
bonsai said:
Vista flopped, end of story. Microsoft is sweeping it under the rug and trying to mend that black eye with Win7.
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From a marketing standpoint, Microsoft failed Vista for not being able to get ahead of the anti-Vista hype.
Whether on a personal or professional level (and i work technical support so it comes up a lot), every single person that I have talked to about Vista that had negative attitudes towards it had never used it, or only briefly used it. Those that were not to stubborn to actually give it a chance have not gone back to XP
End of story... there is nothing wrong with Vista.

It doesnt run well/at all on older hardware... and? How is this new? The gap may be bigger with Vista but I'm pretty sure every new OS generation has had hardware it wouldnt support. Like OMG i cant run <insert latest game here> on my old computer... I'm pretty sure that upgrading hardware is a given when getting new software.

Vista runs slower then XP... umm not in my experience. I use it at home and at work, I have done so since original RTM and my productivity while navigating went up. And despite Aero I got higher FPS in games. I upgraded all my systems at home to Vista, old and not so old and brand new. 0 complaints

Vista was a marketing failure, not a tech failure
I seem to remember that XP did not have so great a launch itself. I recall nothing but complaints from my tech support customers until SP1 was released and even then some still hated it until SP2.
 
Allow me to join the chorus dumping on TIME's sloppy 'reporting':
Microsoft recently announced its first quarterly revenue drop in 23 years. The day of the earnings release CNNMoney observed, "Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was released in early 2007, never took off like the company had hoped. Sales in the division that produces Vista fell 16% in the previous quarter. User satisfaction has been underwhelming, and IT departments have largely opted to stick with Vista's predecessor, Windows XP." The company is rushing Vista's replacement, Windows 7, to market and hopes to have it out by the end of the year.

First revenue drop. Not a loss in money or company value, but a reduction in sales. In the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Funny how TIME manages to conflate the revenue drop with negative press toward Vista, while failing to take the recession into account.

Customer satisfaction has been underwhelming? Where's their data to back that up? IT departments wisely stick with what they and their internal customers know, so that's no shocker. But 'rushing Windows 7 to market'? Given the high quality of the release candidate, I'd say that it feels anything but rushed. The Vista release, despite the long delta after XP, felt rushed. The driver support wasn't there on day one, which definitely hurt early adoption on existing hardware.

HD-DVD failed, for sure. But I enjoyed the fire sale afterwards. 20 HD releases at $8 per disc? Why the heck not?

Youtube.com has changed the way we entertain ourselves and has accelerated the transition of network television content to Internet streaming video. Failure because of lack of revenue? Then so was Amazon.com in its first five years.

The Zune definitely hasn't captured the North American market's imagination. Solid feature set though, and well-made. Too bad it isn't a global product.

Segway...yeah. Given the tiny market for conventional scooters (despite their much lower price point), I'm not sure where the optimism came from.
 
Ya, I'm annoyed the Zune is a global product. If it were, we'd get more languages on it. I wouldn't be stuck with stupid Squares in the filenames for my songs.
 
Ockie said:
I don't think they should be on there. Yes MS ate costs that most companies could not afford, but over all they are doing good with the console. It's not just the console sales, its everything relating directly to the console. The console is also a great console, so I wouldn't constitute that as a failure.
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It is a great console but that doesn't change what you were responding to: "The 360 is also the most unreliable console ever made."

Forget console, it is hands down the most unreliable piece of consumer hardware that I know of. At least three friends of mine are on XBox #3, someone I know is on #4, I myself am on #2, and to this day there are still regular posts on the Shacknews forums of yet another RROD.

I love the 360 but I'm honestly surprised that Microsoft gets a pass on such a faulty piece of hardware. Maybe its because XBox Live and the services around the 360 are so solid, maybe its because they extended the warranty, I dunno, because any other company and they'd be deservedly lynched.
 
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