Barry Collins takes a nostalgic look at the biggest mistakes in the recent history of the computing industry.
It was American businessman Robert Half who said: ‘Not admiring
a mistake is a bigger mistake.’ Well, the IT industry has given us plenty to admire. Whether it’s disastrous mergers, ill-conceived products or plain technical incompetence, the tech business is riddled with decisions that would have been best left unmade.
Our selection of 10 blunders have decimated the value of companies or sent them out of business altogether; they’ve infuriated millions of users with mindless stupidity and arrogance; and they’ve ruined the reputations of the people or the companies involved.
A common theme among our top 10 is that they set out with the best of intentions. Decisions to create new products, technologies or companies are rarely made with evil motives – indeed, at least a couple of our cock-ups were designed to make our lives easier! But as the sci-fi author Douglas Adams wisely noted: ‘A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.’
Unlike most PC Authority tests, there was no set criteria for making our top 10. They simply had to display remarkable stupidity, breathtaking incompetence or a complete common sense bypass. There are several notable failures that came close to making the final cut, including Iomega’s Zip drives and their unmistakable ‘click of death’, Apple’s much-loathed Cube computer or Xerox’s decision to reject the very first home computer. Indeed, as this list was being compiled, Microsoft was making a spectacular last-gasp bid for inclusion with its Windows Genuine Advantage ‘critical update’, a tool that’s seemingly only critical or advantageous for Microsoft.
If you think we’ve made a blunder of our own by omitting a glaring tech howler, let us know at inbox@pcauthority.com.au. But first, sit back and admire the handiwork of the top 10 IT blunders.
1 AOL Time Warner merger
Time Warner director Ted Turner described the moment AOL confirmed its $350bn mega merger with his company in 2000 as more exciting than the time he ‘first made love some 42 years ago’. Sadly for Turner, Time Warner’s torrid love affair with the Internet firm lasted not nearly as long. At the time, the merger was seen as the ultimate vindication of new media: the Internet up-start buying out the long-established media company, to become a broadband multimedia giant. Unfortunately, the only gigantic thing about the merger was the losses.
Before the ink had even dried on the contract, Internet stocks started tumbling as the dotcom bust set in. Within a year, $100bn had been wiped off the balance sheet of the merged company, as the stock plummeted by 90 percent. In-fighting beset the firm, as sceptical old media departments refused to play with the new. The poster boy of the dotcom generation, AOL’s Steve Case, resigned as chairman in 2003, shortly before AOL was dealt the ultimate indignity of having its name removed from the merged company’s title. AOL had been disowned by the company it effectively bought out.
Today, the merged company limps on with rumours of an imminent divorce. The lessons? New and old media don’t mix. And AOL isn’t better than sex. 