# Worst ideas by companies of all time? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 22, 2014, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901 "2014-12-22T10:45:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/81 "2014-12-27T15:54:11Z")
News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million. It sold it five years later for $35 million. But that’s not the worst part. At one point it was valued at $12 billion. With a “b”. The Xerox Palo Alto tale is not simply sad. Xerox itself became Xerox thanks to companies like IBM turning down Chester Carlson’s patent. A story made famous in a book subtitled “The Billions Nobody Wanted”. And yet just 3 decades later, Xerox was on the other end of the tale. I have heard many times that if Xerox had marketed the Alto computer, there would have been no Sun, Apple, etc. (I used the Alto. It was an amazing machine.) They dropped on the ball on GUI, laser printers (and associated proto-PDF software), a bunch of bit-mapped display stuff, network file servers, etc. They only released Ethernet because a consortium of other companies talked them into it. Lesson to remember: Don’t bring in a US car company exec (who brought in his buddies) to run a tech company. Remember the really stupid part of the AOL-TW deal. This happened _after_ the tech bust started. Everybody with two brain cells already knew AOL was immensely overvalued. ---
**Author:** ![StrangerThanFiction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f05b48/32.png) [@StrangerThanFiction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StrangerThanFiction)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/82 "2014-12-27T16:56:35Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Lesson to remember: Don’t bring in a US car company exec (who brought in his buddies) to run a tech company. Well, Eclipse Aviation taught us that you don’t bring in a US tech company exec (who brought in his buddies) to run an airplane company: > [@wikipedia](#): > > The history of Eclipse Aviation is the story of the largest financial failure in the history of general aviation, one that experts have predicted will have a lasting impact on the aerospace industry. > **[History of Eclipse Aviation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Eclipse_Aviation)** > > The history of Eclipse Aviation is the story of the largest financial failure in the history of general aviation, one that experts have predicted will leave a lasting impact on the aerospace industry. > It runs from the company's startup in 1998 to the design and testing of the Eclipse 500 very light jet (VLJ) through 2006, to the production of 260 examples from 2006–2008, development of the Eclipse 400 single-engined jet from 2007–2008, the most deliveries of a VLJ in a single year to date wit... ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/83 "2014-12-27T18:30:25Z")
It’s antiquated and perhaps it made the company a small fortune at the time, but quack radioactive “health” treatments like the [Revigator](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revigator) would irradiate your water overnight with its uranium and radium lined vessel. That’s one way of killing off your customer base. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Goob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c77e96/32.png) [@Mr.Goob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Goob)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/84 "2014-12-30T06:37:39Z")
What about Mercedes buying Chrysler? ---
**Author:** ![GoodOmens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@GoodOmens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GoodOmens)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/85 "2014-12-30T12:20:57Z")
Several major mistakes by Atari: 1. The ET debacle. Basically giving one guy 6 weeks to design such a high-profile game. The game was initially a decent seller, but overall resulted in a loss of about $100 million. 2. Pac-Man for the 2600. This was another rush job, facing significant technical limitations based on the available memory on the system. Though it ended up being the top selling video game at the time, Atari produced WAY too many copies, and the poor critical reception damaged the company’s reputation. 3. The lack of any verification chip, which allowed third-party companies to produce games for the 2600 without quality control by Atari. This resulted in a glut of very low-quality games, and even 8-bit porno (such as the infamous “Custer’s Revenge”). These were major factors that led to the crash of the video game industry in the US in 1983-84. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2014, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/86 "2014-12-30T14:46:47Z")
[Allegis](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_motley_fool/1997/07/you_name_it.html) has got to be up there. In 1985, United Airlines was one of the best-known brand names in America. So… let’s change it, just because. Of course, there were a whole bunch of other fuckups that compounded the error. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/87 "2014-12-31T04:23:10Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > 1. The lack of any verification chip, which allowed third-party companies to produce games for the 2600 without quality control by Atari. This resulted in a glut of very low-quality games, and even 8-bit porno (such as the infamous “Custer’s Revenge”). I have to disagree with this one. Nobody knew about Custer’s Revenge in the early 80s outside of small groups, it didn’t become really infamous until the internet got the story out. Was there some shovelware? Sure. But the same lack of Atari control also brought us Activision, Imagic and other creators that provided content as good, if not better than, “official” Atari releases. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/88 "2014-12-31T14:53:02Z")
Sure, but the shovelware (and the resulting consumer outrage) certainly played a role in the death of Atari. That’s why Nintendo maintained such tight control (probably _too_ tight) over NES third party developers: it had seen what might happen if it didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/89 "2014-12-31T15:31:07Z")
My best friend bought Pac Man for the 2600 when it first came out and played it to death. I played it and was like, “Um, I’m 8 and I could make a better game than this.” In my version, the ghosts would have actually been visible and Pac Man would have faced in the direction he was moving. ET I never had the misfortune of playing, although I did eventually get the Atari computer version which was acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![txjim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f07891/32.png) [@txjim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/txjim)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901/90 "2014-12-31T17:10:42Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > Several major mistakes by Atari: > 3. The lack of any verification chip, which allowed third-party companies to produce games for the 2600 without quality control by Atari. This resulted in a glut of very low-quality games, and even 8-bit porno (such as the infamous “Custer’s Revenge”). I suspect every tech company had plans for a socketed game adapter and a library of copied games. I worked for a company that had access to free EPROMS (QC rejected but still functional) and staff would take turns buying new release games for distribution to the participants. Now, if only I can find those 8" floppies that had the copied code… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-ideas-by-companies-of-all-time/707901.md?page=4)