Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Press Releases of the Damned

The Top Ten worst Tech pressers of all time - things that were massively hyped, and went really, really, really wrong. And they didn't even include OS/2 on the list.

My favorite: eBay buying Skype for Billion$ and then writing off Billion$ to spin it off:
The moment that eBay announced it was buying VoIP pioneer Skype, pundits began questioning the wisdom of the move. eBay confidently talked up all the amazing synergies that would result from the merger; very few of them ever came to be. Now eBay is investing additional money and time to try to get back to what it was before it issued this press release: an e-commerce company that doesn’t own Skype. The Skype founders’ claim that eBay’s billions didn’t buy it the core Skype technology and resulting lawsuit add a fittingly bizarre coda to the whole sad story.
eBay, of course, has a bit of a problem with public relations.

1 comment:

NotClauswitz said...

Still, if Meg Whitman runs for Governor I may have to hold my nose and vote for her...