The world never changes exactly how you expect, but often a failure determines the future as and more than a success, because it sets the stage for what will come.
Over the past 10 years we have learned that the fairy tale of the startup born in the garage is almost never repeated, and large companies often and willingly fail despite the triumphs narrated by their press offices. Here are technological flops that marked the decade, sacrificial victims on the altar of the future.
30 Google Nexus Q
Everyone was confused by Google's Nexus Q when it debuted in 2012, and it's confusion why this bowling ball-like multimedia streamer has crashed yet to hit the market. Priced at $ 299, plus another 399 for the speakers and 49 for the cables, the Nexus Q was incredibly expensive for a paperweight. It only streamed from YouTube, had weird connection problems; it required an app just to change settings. Shortly after the launch announcement, Google postponed the official release date of the Nexus Q, telling users who pre-ordered it that the company had “decided to postpone the launch to make it even better.” That launch never came: Google quietly shelved the device (as it diverted outage rumors) and gave away the remaining prototypes for free, much to the delight of tech flop collectors.
29 LeEco (also known as LeTV)
LeEco, the "Chinese Netflix", was supposed to be the next Chinese tech company to make an appearance in the West. But LeEco's two biggest bets (the acquisition of Californian TV producer Vizio and a Tesla competitor called Faraday Future) ended up tarnishing its reputation and the company's plans. Regulatory hurdles sank his plans to acquire Vizio, which was to be LeEco's grand entry into the entertainment market. The result? An embarrassing withdrawal and a couple of lawsuits.
28 Apple Watch Edition
Apple really thought people would want a $ 17.000 smartwatch. He believed it, really.
Before the Apple Watch was released in 2015, a lavish "Edition" model in 18K gold began appearing on the wrists of celebrities such as Beyoncé. At that price, however, the good Jesus himself could have worn it: nobody spends that money on an item that becomes obsolete in 10 months. It is not a Rolex.
With the first versions managed to deal with the market with realism, the ceramic glass case and the decidedly lower price have put the crazy design of the luxury Apple Watch at bay. Or should I call it apple watch flop Edition?
27 JooJoo
Among the technological flops, perhaps the most unfortunate. Maybe. Originally known as CrunchPad, JooJoo was one of the first tablets. Two years before Apple announced the iPad, TechCrunch co-founder Michael Arrington asked his readers to help him build the $ 200 computer. Hardware problems drove the final product to $ 500 and a very late launch, just days before the launch of Apple's iPad. And JooJoo, born too long ago, had practically no equipment compared to the new Apple tablet. Inevitable disaster.
26 Google Reader
In 2019, Google Reader finally got the tombstone it deserved. It's not the first or the last time that Google has debunked an idea, but it was certainly one of the stupidest: Google's decision to kill the beloved RSS reader in 2013, despite protests and probably just to save costs. of the server. Virtually a fatal blow to RSS feed as a news distribution technology. I still mourn his loss.
25 Secret
For a brief moment in 2014 an "anonymous" social was all the rage. Secret would show you the messages of your friends and friends of friends, without identifying anyone by name. The result was a relatively safe space to talk about sex, drugs, and other things that would push you off Facebook. Almost immediately it accumulated 15 million users and raised 35 million in funding. But the lesson we've learned over the past decade is that nothing can remain anonymous for long. No lasting identity, no lasting social. Just 16 months after launch, the co-founder of Secret pulled the plug on his own, sending Secret to the anonymous app graveyard along with Yik Yak, Ask.fm, Formspring and more. The founders are still busy giving the money back to investors, and maybe they've kept a few million for themselves.
24 Magic Leap
When Google suddenly put half a billion dollars in the Magic Leap cases, the unknown AR startup seemed ready to change everything, despite the fact that nobody knew anything about its product, and since then things have gone more or less the same way.
Magic Leap illustrated a bunch of high-sounding patents with lots of stolen sci-fi images and promised havoc. In reality, the first product was very similar to the current Microsoft HoloLens, but without a business model or an established company behind it. For $ 2,6 billion raised, Magic Leap sold only 6000 pieces.
23 Microsoft Band
Microsoft's first attempt at wearable hardware felt more like a social experiment. Yes, you could have used Band to buy a coffee from Starbucks, but not even Starbucks could save this gadget from death after the release of a second version perhaps even worse than the first. Eventually Microsoft cut losses by shutting down servers and offering refunds to apologize to users.
22 Solyndra
Of all the confirmations an energy company might be looking for, having a President as an ambassador is probably at the top of the list.
That was the fortunate position Solyndra found itself around 2009, when its circular solar panels caught Obama's attention. The company had everything the Obama administration wanted: innovative and efficient design, the potential to provide hundreds of new jobs and billions of dollars in funding. The only problem was that there was actually no business plan. Solyndra went bankrupt in just two years, due to skyrocketing costs and a nearly non-existent customer base.
21 I put
Neil Young has spent years disparaging MP3, iTunes, and digital music as a whole, insisting that compressed sound quality ruins the listening experience compared to CDs and vinyl. In 2012 he tried to solve the problem on his own, announcing the Pono music player and a shop that would sell lossless, high-fidelity audio files. Pono gained so much attention and over $ 6 million in funding.
On his arrival in 2015, however, practically no one was spun. Maybe the horrible design? Maybe the noisy yellow color? Maybe. However, the idea of providing quality music was later revived: Tidal, for example. Or Music Unlimited, the recent Amazon service praised by a Neil Young finally satisfied, so much so that he could sing on a personalized mp3 base.
20 Galaxy fold
Come on, you all know this flop. I have never seen a launch like that of the Samsung Galaxy Fold. Purchased phones broke within a week. Virtually ALL.
There was like a little film on the phone and everyone thought it was for protection. It wasn't for protection. It was part of the phone. How Samsung thought this device was ready for launch, much less as such a high profile device, remains a mystery today. The company reworked the project and released it again later, but the damage was enormous.
19 Google+
This stellar flop is also well known. For the magnitude of the collapse, for Google's persistence in trying to save it, and for a dozen other absurd reasons. Almost three and a half years after opening its doors to the public it was impossible to name a single person who had created a real following on Google+, or a news that went viral on Google+, or anything good on Google+.
Paradoxically, we have to "thank" the huge breach of privacy that occurred in October 2018, which took it out of the way for good.
18 Google Tango
For tango it takes two, but Google has never found a partner to break through the world into augmented reality. Too bad, given that Project Tango has always had potential.
Launched in 2014, it adopted a new approach to AR focused on locating the position of a device in space (such as the human sense of proprioception). Google's plan was to build the core technology, then allow phone makers and developers to make consumer products.
In the end, only two companies (Lenovo and Asus) accepted Google's appeal, however, creating devices that absolutely did not live up to expectations. In 2017, Google shut down Tango in favor of its more traditional ARCore augmented reality framework.
17 Lily Drone
A completely waterproof drone that can follow you down a mountain, take off when you throw it in the air and automatically take your photo sounds like the best ever today, let alone in 2015. Well, it was a crowdfunding disaster. After years of hype and anticipation, it was revealed that the company's promotional video was a fake.
Lily Robotics has never shipped a single unit of the 60.000 pre-ordered, and was sued by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. Even though the company received $ 34 million from its backers and another 15 million in venture capital, many of these backers never received a refund.
16 The Facebook Phone
The early years of 2010 were great for Facebook, but perhaps they fooled Zuckerberg who was struck by a slight form of delirium of omnipotence. Making phones with a dedicated Facebook button? Madness. The Menlo Park house teamed up with HTC to launch Status and Salsa, two frankly ignoble phones.
Not content with the first two tech flops, the two companies made three of a kind with HTC First, which was kind of Frankenstein. To be clear, an Android device with a personalized Facebook Home skin. Embarrassing meteors, disappear almost immediately.
15 wine
Before it was a failure, Vine was a glorious cultural engine. The 6-second looping videos invented by the app became a launch pad for comedians and musicians, while also introducing countless priceless memes. No deceased social network is remembered with more affection.
Unfortunately for Vine it was bought by Twitter, who perhaps never knew what to do with it, and certainly never understood it. The New York Twitter team languished while the San Francisco team focused on more pressing issues, including non-profitability. Vine itself stopped growing when Instagram introduced videos and ads. Influencers ditched the app and in 2016 it became a desert. She lives in her spiritual successor, TikTok.
14 AirPower
Apple is usually associated with some of the best engineering and design projects, as well as with some really important technological flops. For a long time, however, Apple hasn't made a big mistake: for this reason AirPower can be considered the biggest recent failure of the Cupertino house.
Announced alongside the iPhone X, AirPower promised to be a new type of wireless charger, capable of charging up to three devices at the same time (I don't know: an iPhone, an Apple Watch, and AirPods). Apparently getting these technologies to work at the same time was more difficult than expected, and a year and a half after the announcement of its creation, AirPower was unceremoniously canceled by the company.
13 Ouya
Ouya seemed like a good idea. Launched at a time when mobile hardware was rapidly improving but games weren't really using it, the startup proposed sticking an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip into a nifty $ 99 Yves Behar-designed box. The package included a game controller and demo games. Ouja raised over $ 8 million on Kickstarter and is still the XNUMXth most funded project in the platform's history. Unfortunately the controller was terrible, the software was out of order, and the store didn't have any worthwhile games. One of Kickstarter's biggest success stories turned into the biggest failure in the real world.
12 Samsung Bixby
Apple had Siri, Amazon had Alexa, Microsoft had Cortana, Google had Google Assistant. What could Samsung do? Voila, here comes Bixby. Samsung has done its best to make it work, even going so far as to add a mandatory Bixby button to some of its phones.
But Samsung's assistant wasn't exactly good, and had the only advantage of pissing people off by being a valuable relief valve against stress. Unlike many of the things on this list, Bixby still exists today: a "homeless" assistant, as Samsung Home hasn't been developed yet. If you meet him, avoid him.
11 Windows 8
Do you want to go back to experience the thrill of seeing the Start menu and the Windows button disappear? Do you want everything familiar about Microsoft's OS to be moved a little shit here and there? Reinstall Windows 8.
In those days Microsoft was chasing the iPad and went straight to touchscreens forgetting what people actually used their PCs for. Windows 8 included a user interface, a full-screen Start menu, and a botched interface. Windows 10 ended the disaster. At least to that, I say.
10 Google Project Ara
The dream of modular smartphones began in 2013 with the video concept Phonebloks by Dave Hakkens. Who would not want a portable and flexible device capable of lasting longer than the disposable designs that were seen around. Do you prefer Face ID over a fingerprint scanner? Enter the form. More speed? Insert new memory and a better processor. More beautiful photos? Change camera. Google's new Motorola division took the concept and tried them all.
The reason for the failure is not known, but the project closed in 2016. "The end of an Ara" can be said, or is it the worst pun ever made for technological flops?
9 Juicero
Juicero promised the juice in an envelope. Not a box of juice, how dare you? A bag of fresh fruit and vegetables sealed in a QR code verified envelope that required a $ 700 machine to squeeze it and release the juice.A bit like Nespresso but for the juice.
Investors and Bloomberg found, however, that in the end the machine - the centerpiece of the entire Juicero operation - was unnecessary. People could squeeze the juice packs by hand. By hand! Immediate closure of the company. I don't wonder why it failed. I wonder how he got funds.
8 The Dieselgate
The biggest car scandal of the decade began when a group of researchers from West Virginia University ran into some anomalies in the emissions tests of a Volkswagen Jetta. Since then, almost all important VW characters have been charged with fraud in the so-called Dieselgate. Volkswagen has paid over $ 30 billion in fines since it was discovered and has promised to spend billions more in an effort to become a leader in electric vehicles. But tech flops never come alone: it doesn't seem to end here.
7 Hoverboards
When so-called "hoverboards" first became a trend in 2015 (teenagers and adults whizzing through the streets like floating statues, barely moving faster than if they'd just walked) the sense of ridicule was already strong. Where was the Back to the Future levitation we were promised? Whether it is humiliation or simply thearrival of more practical electric scooters, it seems that hoverboards have evaporated quickly becoming the fastest technological flops to fade. I often see them on high discount online sites, and in my scrapbook (famous hoverboard that Google gave to my agency and that produced memorable falls).
6 The Fyre Festival
When tech flops are really, really epic: I still have before my eyes the images of the incredible Netflix documentary that tells what happened.
The year is 2017, and in a nutshell: Billy McFarland throws an expensive festival with rapper Ja Rule, plans NOTHING, gets a sea of pre-booked people (with staggering tickets), spends the money on himself and the influencers promoting the event. When attendees arrive on the exclusive island and start tweeting photos of their lodgings (bad tents, sad cheese sandwiches), an immediate wave of schadenfreude sweeps the net. A terrifying catastrophe.
The event generated a couple of documentaries, an infinite number of blogs and triggered a growing wave of interest in travelers that has continued to this day. We are post-Fyre in many ways, especially as we talk about scams now.
5 Apple Maps
Tired of suffering from Google for its maps, Apple decided to launch its version in 2012 along with iOS 6. An ambitious undertaking, given the strength that Google already had. But Apple will have made "the best Maps ever," right? Here you are. No. Apple Maps was buggy, lacking public transit information, and in some areas and countries it literally offered nothing but blanks or errors. The feat eventually led to a massacre of Apple executives, and the company would spend the rest of the decade trying to build a true Google Maps competitor.
Seven years later, Apple Maps was rebuilt from scratch. As of September 2019, directions (this time detailed) are only offered in 10 cities around the world, while Google has sent Street View practically also in space. Good luck in the remuntada!
4 3D TVs
Coming out of the huge success that was "Avatar" in 2009, 3D TV had to bring a new level of immersion in the way people watch movies in their living room. I smell tech flops.
But unlike cinemas, where 3D projections are still quite common, the effort to bring that same experience home has failed miserably. Let's face it: nobody wants to wear 3D glasses while sprawled on the sofa. And the screen sizes of most televisions don't show 3D in the same way that content comes out of a giant movie screen.
TV companies continued to support 3D for several years, and there was a decent selection of Blu-ray 3D to choose from. In the second half of the decade, the industry gave up on the dream and moved towards HDR and other image enhancements that don't require glasses. Some don't even require a view.
3 The Google Glass
The debut was spectacular: Google co-founder Sergey Brin took the stage during an event in 2012 to show viewers a live stream of paratroopers wearing Google Glass as they landed on top of the convention center.
These glasses would change the world, he said. And they could have if they hadn't scared people so much. A camera always on you? What about privacy? How do we focus the images? Is it true that wearing them causes terrible headaches? Google keeps the dream alive with professional versions and for medical projects, but perhaps the world is simply not ready.
2 Galaxy Note 7
When Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 was first reviewed, the technicians went crazy. How beautiful it is, how strong it is. The most well-made smartphone ever. Then the first exploded. Within just two weeks, another 35 devices followed and caught fire like this: poof, like nothing. One even on a plane, causing a circular prohibition on all flights. Samsung ran for cover by withdrawing all the devices, and replacing them with different terminals. Instead of ending up in an abyss, he threw his "degenerate" creation into it, guaranteeing survival. Then (back to point 20) he returned to the crime scene with the Galaxy Fold. Who is born round does not die framework.
1 The queen of tech flops: Theranos
Everything is known about this flop too: valued at 9 billion dollars and apparently ready to revolutionize medicine, Theranos went bankrupt in 2018. It promised a revolutionary blood test, so easy to do in the pharmacy. Then the Wall Street Journal revealed that the company-owned blood test didn't work. CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes had fooled everyone, executives and customers, by using standard blood tests instead of the product she was selling. A giant scam. Holmes was later indicted for fraud and earlier this year her attorneys said they had not received payments for months.
