Top 10 Failures of 2009
In our yearly wrap-ups of the best products of 2009, we cannot but notice the shadow that falls over the editorial desk.
We are chilled and saddened by the ghosts of the past year - the apps that should have been, the startups that failed to launch, the brilliant ideas that were throttled, the great minds that were fired, the tech heroes that committed tragic gaffes. But some failures were so monumental that they require specific enumeration and commentary. Here are the 10 worst tech failures of 2009.
Google Wave Sucked
This is one case where the hype was as noisy as the app - and both were deafening. We have to hand it to Google's publicity team; we don't know one geek who wasn't positively salivating for a Wave invite. The ReadWriteWeb back channel was a complete melee when the first invites were rolled out to team members. But once we got there and saw the new tech tricks, like watching one another type, we started thinking about use cases. And the more we struggled to understand and use this product, the more frustrated and bored we became. Blame it on the steep learning curve. Blame it on our misunderstanding the product. Mount whatever feeble defense you like, but techies know Wave was a flop.
The TabletPads Went to the Deadpool
All we wanted was a $200-500 flat piece of glass and plastic with some fancy gizmodgery inside so we could look at the Internet from the comfort of our couches. And what did we get? Rumors, Photoshopped gadget porn, promises - lies, all lies. We'd have been better off if we'd spent those months drawing the Yahoo! home page on an Etch-A-Sketch. Although the Crunchpad has resurfaced as the JooJoo, the price has been marked up considerably, and the whole project just seems wrong to us now. Moreover, five will get you ten that Michael Arrington, father of the Crunchpad and a former attorney, is fixing to get litigious right about now, which might significantly delay the product's appearance on the market.
Powerset Resurfaced as Bing
In 2008, Powerset was one of the stealthiest, sexiest startups on the Silicon Valley block. About five minutes after launching, Powerset got snatched up by Microsoft to the tune of $100 million. When everyone had retrieved their dentures from the ground and changed their pants, they noticed that Powerset's ever-so-sexy tech had been folded quietly into the Borg for assimilation. And about a year later, Bing was born, reportedly from the tech that Microsoft scraped off the infant carcass of Powerset. And Bing sucked. We had such high hopes.
Twitter Failed to Innovate
While some of us had our money on a Twitter sale in 2009, others were simply waiting for the company to debut a radical, interesting, mutually beneficial revenue model. At the very least, most users were hoping that the scalability issues and downtime that made Twitter the tragic heroine of 2008 would be put to rest.
Twitter's failures this year were less about the headlines they made than the ones they didn't make. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, Twitter didn't capitalize on their massive adoption increase (a.k.a., their Oprahtization) and sell. Worse yet, they didn't buy. When one recalls the purchase of Summize and then contrasts it with this year's explosion of excellent Twitter apps, one wonders why none of these small startups or one-off side projects were acquired. Perhaps this was a case of "Hey, we can do that!" as Twitter certainly seemed intent on pilfering features (such as lists and retweets) from third-party developers. Too bad the "official" Twitter features suck a lot more than the original third-party designs.
But worst of all, we are still consistently experiencing downtime at a level that is unacceptable for any major web app. Google couldn't get away with this kind of failure; why should Twitter be allowed to do so?
The Great Firewall of China Drama Continued and Worsened
To date, China's "Golden Shield Project" restrictions on Internet use are throttling traffic from that country to websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Bing, and many, many more. Banned sites include news organizations that cover controversial events, pro-democracy sites and blogs, any site acknowledging the existence of Taiwan, YouTube, most blogging websites (Wordpress, Blogger, etc.) and anything the government deems to be obscene or profane. In countries where creative self expression and the ability to browse, learn and make decisions independently are freedoms too often taken for granted, these restrictions are indeed unthinkable. The project began in 1998 and still made plenty of headlines this year for its renewed affronts to freedom on the Internet. For example, in June, the Chinese government announced it would be rolling out censorship software on every new computer sold in the country.
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Like I said about the Leapfish video the other day: this is what happens when you give a Leapfish intern After Effects, some Web buzzwords, and the soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean. Brilliant.
LeapFish may of been a fail, but huge applause to whoever the music supervisor was on the video. Bold, strong, and convincing music... the kind of music that makes investors feel like conquerors.
Excellent article !!!!!!
ereaderuniverse.com
Now wait just a sec here...you're saying that the Emperor has no clothes? But eleventy million Tweeters (all of whom seem to be offering a free social media webinar this week) told me that Wave is the next big thing and that people are no longer going to need to learn how to speak since the future is all about apps on your iPhone. Who to believe???
I don´t agree about googlewave...we´ll see in some time if you are right.
I think I'll wait for Google Wave to actually come out of its Alpha 'Preview' release status before I drop the hammer on it. You haven't even seen a feature complete version of the product yet! Its pretty ambitious don't you think? I swear that soon you bloggers will want real unicorns delivered with every new app (no matter how many alpha/beta graphics are stamped on it) before you're satisfied.
R.I.P Google Wave!
I'll have to agree 100% on LeapFish. The ridiculous, bombastic, drama-queen-on-steroids music is so over the top, I fear this is a larger trend. Especially prevalent in reality programming like Hell's Kitchen.
OMG, they're going to make a SALAD in THREE MINUTES. Break out the Carmina Burana! Will civilization survive?
When someone beats me over the head like this, I say "ow" -- not "wow."
Posted by: reechard.myopenid.com
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December 7, 2009 9:15 PM
I don't agree on Google Wave either. I don't know what Google was thinking launching a half-baked version but I think views will change on Wave in time.
"Oracle Acquired MySQL... Will MySQL remain free-as-in-beer and open source? Or will it succumb to corporate lameness?"
It will be sad to see MySQL go down the road of "pay-to-play database". But thats were it would eventually end up because Oracle is in the business of making money.
driver update software
What's wrong with the LeapFish video? I kinda like it. Do you feel the music is cheesy? I mean... I agree, it really doesn't demonstrate what the service does. However, it did enough to keep me watching until the end.
I would add the blockage of the Google voice app for the iPhone.
+ the continuing hold up of VOIP (e.g. skype) apps for mobile
I wouldn't call Google Wave a failure. A "letdown" maybe. Maybe a "disappointment." But it's soooo early to call it a failure.
In its current incarnation, it is plagued by information overload. But I think that will be hammered out over time, as Google iterates the product based on user feedback.
Spot on, Jolie -- and nicely avoiding the usual crowd wisdom that yawns loftily about major trends like cloud computing while (mysteriously, to my mind) embracing Google Wave as groundbreaking. Also a scream to read: I'm still getting over the "infant carcass" line. Well done!
What about trading? You americans get Spotify, and Europe - or at least Scandinavia - get Hulu.
I agree with all of these. Spotify also had a major security breach back in March.
I don't think MySQL will become closed source, Oracle will just want to capitalise on it as a way to sell other services to small businesses.
Like many of the other people here, I don't agree Google Wave is a failure yet. Yes, it's far too slow to be genuinely useful, but it shows promise.
But I do agree about the Oracle/MySQL thing. Most disturbing. It's deals like that which anti-trust, anti-competitive authorities should be looking at rather than wasting their time on nonsense such as which web browser Windows ships with. Buying up your competitors who offer free alternatives... that's REALLY anti-competitive.
Twitter did not fail to innovate. It was innovation to let the realtime web flourish without eating it's big monetized players. That was an innovative strategy. I argue that Twitter's massive and diverse ecosystem of 3rd party applications is an innovation in distributed application development. They have so many diverse and interesting apps running on their infrastructure. Ideas they didn't come up with and are not liable for and can make money from the success of. That is an amazing invention.
Signing deals to feed Google and Microsoft (to keep them relevant to the present). Against the competitive trend of "dominating" a media format is innovative business development. Microsoft and Google wouldn't have made that deal. That deal made Bing and Google literally yesterday's internet.
It was an amazing piece of stewardship to watch. For anyone with the eyes to see it. Evan Williams held steady and focused on maintaining the service as it scaled massively once again (they scale on a vertcal slope year over year).
Every outlet in the media had at least one writer who suddenly became a nosy grandparent, nagging him: "how are you going to make money?, shouldn't you shack up with someone nice like Google?, how are you going to keep this up?"
His infrastructure encroached upon Iran's Election and proliferated interconnection in realtime between disparate cultures all over the planet.
They could have cashed in at record scale many times this year. Instead, they held the line, dug in their position and continued to do what they are good at: The Work.
That that service stays up is a magnificent achievement and I believe the reason the Wave sucked so bad (and you're right, it sucked) is that Google doesn't know how to scale to the size of Twitter. Not the Tweeting part and the website. The API and partnerships.
The ecosystem was an innovative success. Take them off the fail list please. They deserve better treatment.
Am I missing something here...Bing is on your best and worst lists? Please make up your mind!
That Leapfish video looks like it could have come right out of a Brasseye special.
Uhm, so PowerSet -- a $100m acquisition, returning over 10x multiple for their investors, now integrated into the second-most-popular search engine on the planet, is a failure?
What kind of weird standard are you guys using as a measure of success, in that case?
"It was the tech industry equivalent of FOX cancelling the Simpsons."
Bad analogy - the simpsons should have been cancelled a long time ago, it's only a shadow of the great relevant show it once was. Maybe you should have used arrested development or futurama.
Regarding Google Wave, I'm not sure how you can really say unfinished beta software is a failure but there you go.
Cuil anybody?
People are still offering Google Wave invites on Twitter, but it's more hush-hush now - almost apologetic. I'm still not interested.
1. Bing doesn't actually suck. It's not better than Google for most searches, but there's a difference between being somewhat inferior and actually sucking. For search engine sucking sounds, you'll have to go back last year to Cuil, or a few years more to Ask Jeeves.
2. 99.9-with-a-macron% of Bing has nothing to do with PowerSet. PowerSet technology is not useful on general web search material.
3. PowerSet, however, was never very impressive even prior to its buyout by Microsoft, mainly because prior to Bing all it could really do was a little bit of processing on Wikipedia and Freebase, for which direct use of either site was more efficient.
Uh, Google Wave does not suck....
So your problem was it took you too long to learn and you got frustrated at not being able to find a use for it, goodness forbid we try to learn new software.. Better to get frustrated and quit. Seriously any person who calls themselves a techie and acts like that is delusional. Just because YOU couldn't think of a use for it doesn't mean other people won't.
Only took me about a hour or two to get a grasp of how it worked then shortly after started to use it for planning some projects I'm working on with friends.
Spreading content across multiple pages.... FAIL
This list is a failure.
I would write a long comment as to why, but that would be a further waste of my time after reading this blog post.
Apple in general. For a monopolistic company who had a free run while Android wasn't out of the starting blocks, and Vista was still dying of some nasty venereal disease, they completely failed to capatalise. I am sure there are plenty of Americans crying foul at the statement, but face it, USA has always been a small market on the world stage, and is now officially smaller than Europe, and will be smaller then China within 5 years, the fact that Apple can only please Americans while ignoring the desires, needs and basic consumer rights in every other country around the world only dooms Apple in the long run.
More specifically, Snow Leopard is a complete failure. The data eating 64 bit OS that only boots in 32 bit by default (and only 32 bit on more than 50% of Macs)... the OS that even Apple could not believe they could overcharge for. The OS with no new features (though to listen to Mac fanatics it was a W7 beater).
I'm glad to hear other people feel Leapfish is sketchy. At my last company, they tried to bully me to buy advertising on their site. I told them no a couple times, but they kept calling.
You are wrong about Google Wave. For those of us that have learned to use it and found its collaborative nature, it establishes new ground for sharing information. Its much more effective if you know 100 people that have wave accounts that are in the same line of work. Thats when its power starts to show. Yes, its slow right now, but that can be fixed. The product is great and does exactly what it says it will do.
I agree that this list isn't great, but there's one thing that I really want to clear up:
Steep learning curves means something is *easy* to learn.
I know that's not how people use it but that is what it means. A learning curve is the line on a graph or performance over time, where the performance axis ranges from beginner to pro. A steep learning curve means that the slope of the line is high, thus you are able to go from a no0b to a pro in a very short period of time. This means it is easy to learn. Think about it.
Hard to learn things are the opposite of steep. They take months and months to gain any skill, which means the learning curve is next to flat.
Think before you post [redacted] lists.
its good article. and i agree to. Google wave did suck big time.
I dont agree with you. Your foremost point - "Google wave Sucked" is not at all true. You need to understand it before you write such things.
I agree, Google wave is tough to understand but there articles to explain wave in laymans term . You must understand that wave is not made for fun. It is not for causal users. Look at the usability for corporate point of view. Very useful for teams, professionals and small companies.
BTW, rest of your points are valid. 2010 should be hopefully good.
The Leapfish video is great - with Star Wars meets Sparrow sound track, M. Jackson in it and endless buzzwords. Where the web meets the world? wt*
Didn't know the AOL rebranding logos - they seem to be from the same author as the leapfish video.
Keep it up!
Ya i didn't care for Google Wave, either. Not a very big deal.
Great article! Especially agree on Twitter: they very badly need to make their service more reliable, notably the API.
Google Wave is not web accessible, plain and simple. Horrible job here. They need to take the lead in this arena like Yahoo! is doing. And with the tons of money that Google has, this shouldn't be a problem. More on my podcast: http://webaxe.blogspot.com/2009/10/podcast-75-jeremy-keith-interview-wave.html
Oh wow, you really did pick some good ones dude.
RT
www.web-anonymity.se.tc
Nice list.
Only thing I don't agree also is with Wave. I do think Google overhyped the product at the launch, they did not manage expectations correctly. It is not a new Google search as such, and it should not be taken as a one simple product. it is something a bit more sophisticated and complex than that.
It should be seen as a raw platform, it will take some time for great google wave applications to popup, but when do do popup I believe they are (web)life changing.
Let's just hope that disappointment which came after the hype, doesn't kill the product before it even took off.
The sad thing about your post and blogging in general is that you post articles slamming various companies and they have absolutely no recourse.
As an example, last night I posted some Google statistics about you, the author of this article, that were unflattering, but true in so far as they were numbers regarding Google search statistics. However, because you have the power in this particular rag, you can delete whatever you disagree with. That is not journalism.
Just because you have a stage and a microphone does not mean you are correct or justified in what you have to say. Free speech does not mean that you can put someone down and then delete their rebuttal. That is not "free speech"; that is totalitarianism.
Actually, it is really just your ego getting in the way of professional journalistic objectivity. Perhaps they don't teach that in Universities ranked in the high 3,000's.
Sadly, you will delete this post as well which, between you and me, just proves my point.
If you Google "Jolie Odell is a hack", you get 28,900 hits
Boybunny you say apple is a failure? Go look at apple stock then go look at microsofts stock apples stock is atleast 8 times higher and keep I mind apple is a 12 times smaller company than Microsoft. If that's not success then please explain what is?
The leapfish video just reminds me of The Day Today. Anyone for cake?
That was a punch in the face for me. After struggling very hard for an invite to Google wave, i am reading that its the #1 failure of 2009 .... no i am not crying no ...
I'm going to comment on #1, Google Wave. I don't think it sucked. Working on a post about use cases now. Hope to have ready soon.
@Steven Vaughan - Your previous comment was deleted because it contained foul language and entirely personal attacks that had nothing to do with the discussion we are attempting to have in this thread.
We welcome a variety of opinions in our comments, but profanity and insults are not tolerated.
Wave is going to be huge in 2011.
Though I agree with most of the list the biggest disagreement is with Google Wave, I don't think it was a failure at all. It was advertised as the 2009 e.mail and I've been using it as a replacement for email in several projects and that has led to many improvements in productivity and organization of work.
I think the problem with wave was that it generated a hype like if it was the new google social network, but it's a tool for work so people waited for it with the wrong expectations.
Wave is indeed a great tool and we'll have to wait for further developments because Google is making the wave team stronger.
Where did you get that lol cat? I must have it!!!!
thanks
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