Published: Tuesday 19th May, 2009 | Author: Parm Mann
Companies: Microsoft (All Microsoft content)
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email to a friendTime Magazine seems to cause controversy every once in a while, and its list of "the 10 biggest tech failures of the last decade" is likely to ruffle the feathers of some of the industry's biggest names - including the likes of Microsoft, Google and Palm.
In compiling its last, Time Magazine states that included products had to meet certain criteria. Products needed to be aimed at the global market and had to be technologically equal to or superior to its competition. On top of that, products must have had the opportunity to make billions of dollars in revenue, but must have clearly failed to live up to expectations.
Catastrophic failures, in other words. So, who are the unfortunate names to make the list? Here it is in its entirety:
Microsoft, the only company to appear twice, has been flagged for its Zune and Windows Vista products - the latter of which has been accused by Time of failing to be "viewed as clearly better than its predecessors". Backing up its accusation with recent statistics, the magazine adds that Vista's global share of PC operating systems sat last month at just 24 per cent - a long way from the 62 per cent occupied by its ageing predecessor, Windows XP.
Elsewhere, a somewhat surprise inclusion is the now Google-owned YouTube. The wildly-popular video sharing service has been pulled up due to its failure to come up with a money-making business model. According to sales figures from various sources, YouTube is thought to be making $240 million this year but would need to triple that amount to break-even and cover the mammoth costs of bandwidth and storage. Such is the problem, that Google may never get a return on its $1.65 billion investment, says Time.
It's an interesting list, and you can take a closer look at Time.com. We'd be interested in hearing your thoughts - do you agree with the list, or can you think of any glaring omissions? Voice your opinion in the HEXUS.community forums.
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Its just the mass of whining gits who hopped on the flame bandwagon.
Windows 7 is more of a marketing campaign designed to put an end to noobs who flamed a perfectly good OS in the first place.
Now having at least 2GB of ram is the industry standard there is nothing really that wrong with vista.
and Youtube? why? OK it has let in to some publisher BS latley with Warner Bros just deleting peoples videos without notice and Geographic availability and allowing normal users to make videos US only... I guess its purely for financial reasons.Quote
KimbieQuote
I like how they say Vista only has a 24% share compared to XP at 62%. Does the fact Vista was released 4 or 5 years after XP not factor into it? So its not really that bad, I would like to see the figures of 2000 usage and XP in the same time frame.
Kimbie
Exactly, and that was also the time roughly of Windows ME! Considering XP is the longest lived version of windows I'm actually surprised that after such a well entrenched OS in the market share that it's actually falling as quickly as it is.
Aside from the moaners on some forums etc I don't know anyone personally in "real life" who's deliberately chosen XP over Vista when getting a new PC. Sure people complain about Vista (lack of drivers etc) but it's actually much less than when XP came out in my experience (how quickly some people forget). Vista's been far more stable for me and much better with driver compatibility than when I upgraded from 98 to XP (when I had to dump and replace pretty new hardware at the time).Quote
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