Ten of the Stupidest Tech Company Blunders

Every so often, up pops a "top ten" article that takes a look at the biggest mistakes made in the tech industry, and too often, most include the exact same ten. A recent article posted at PC World, though, brings forth some major mistakes that I forgot all about, or didn't hear about at all. Some even make me cringe at thinking about such lost opportunities.

Did you know, for example, that Yahoo! aimed to purchase Facebook in 2006? This was at a time when Facebook had 8 million users and a modest value compared to today. Yahoo! offered $1B, but due to issues that arose, they ended up losing out on the deal. Today, Facebook has 250 million users, and is valued at around $10B. Just imagine if Yahoo! did go through with the purchase... they sure wouldn't be struggling as they are today.

Then there is OpenText, the Google before Google. It began in the earliest days of the Internet as a search engine, and the company claimed that all 5 million documents available on the web at the time were indexed with it. That's great, except execs at the company decided to take an alternate direction with their business, totally underestimating how important web searches were to become. Google came out a few years later, and are now worth billions, and billions and...

More mentions include how Microsoft "saved" Apple, by pretty much donating $150 million, Napster's demise and what could have happened if the music industry actually made proper decisions and a lot more. There's much here not mentioned, but really, that would end up becoming a top 100 article, wouldn't it?

In the early 1990s the Compuserve Information Service had "an unbelievable set of advantages that most companies would kill for: a committed customer base, incredible data about those customers' usage patterns, a difficult-to-replicate storehouse of knowledge, and little competition," says Kip Gregory, a management consultant and author of Winning Clients in a Wired World. "What it lacked was probably ... the will to invest in converting those advantages into a sustainable lead."

iTunes Continues to Dominate Music Sales

Is this much of a surprise? Given that Apple's iPods continue to dominate the market, iTunes' success was bound to follow - and it has. According to recent reports by the NPD group, iTunes sales accounted for a staggering 25% of the entire overall music market in the US, and accounted for 69% where digital music is concerned, towering over the likes of Amazon.com, which holds just 8%.

These numbers are very revealing as to the future of the music sales landscape. Physical CDs have been decreasing in popularity since the digital music scheme of things exploded, but believe it or not, it's still the CD that holds the majority of the sales. Digital music downloads are expected to eclipse the sales of physical CDs by the end of 2010.

I've expressed my own opinions on this many times before, and my mind certainly hasn't changed. I'm still the kind of person who loves walking through a real music store, rummaging through the selection and leaving with a couple of new discs to go home and rip. But, I seem to be part of a dying breed, and I'm personally wondering just how long it will take before the physical music store will disappear, if ever.

Who's with me? Do you prefer to purchase the real CD or hop online to download it? Are you opposed to purchasing music on other physical media, not on CDs?

iTunes-purchased songs now account for 25 percent of the overall music market--both physical and digital--in the U.S., says an NPD Group report released Tuesday. However, CDs are still the most popular format for music lovers, winning a 65 percent slice of the market for the first half of 2009. Digital music downloads have jumped in recent years, said NPD, hitting 35 percent of the overall market for the first half of this year, compared with 30 percent last year and 20 percent in 2007.

Tech Roundup - August 18, 2009

Motherboards & Processors
• EVGA X58 x3 Classified - Overclock3D

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS GeForce GTX 285 Matrix - Madshrimps
• ASUS Radeon EAH4770 - PCSTATS
• VisionTek Radeon HD 4770 - Bjorn3D
• XFX Radeon HD 465X-YAF2 - Motherboards.org

Memory & Storage
• A-DATA 32GB XPG Series Xupreme USB Flash Drive - Legit Reviews
• Crucial M225 Solid State Drive - Benchmark Reviews

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Gaming Mouse Mat Roundup - Metku
• Razer Megalodon Gaming Headset - Technic3D
• TrickleStar TV TrickleSaver - TestFreaks

Cooling
• CoolIT Domino ALC Water Cooling Kit - ClubOC
• Kingston HyperX Memory Fan - Legit Reviews
• Noctua NF-S12B FLX Fan - Overclockers Online
• Noctua NF-S12B FLX Fan - Technic3D

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Corsair HX 750W Modular Power Supply - ThinkComputers
• QNAP TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS - PC Review
• Thermaltake Element G Chassis - Neoseeker
• Thermaltake Element T Chassis - Motherboards.org

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Asus G51VX-RX05 Gaming Notebook - HotHardware
• Magellan Maestro 4370 GPS - TechReviewSource