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hi welcome to another ColdFusion video
in previous ColdFusion videos we've
often seen the success stories of some
of the largest and most influential
companies but what about the other side
what about the blunders missed
opportunities and utter disasters that
in turn brought some companies to ruin
well today you're in luck because here
are six of such stories let's get
straight into it number six Kodak had
the first digital camera back in 1977
whenever technology changes the
landscape of an industry there are some
businesses that adapt and thrive and
others that continue doing the same old
thing until it's too late for Kodak who
fell behind due to the advent of the
digital camera the situation was a
little different
Kodak actually patented the first
digital cameras back in 1977 it was one
that used a magnetic cursor to store
images of about 100 kilobytes however
over the coming years Kodak made so much
money off of film that they let the new
technology gather dust not realizing
it's potential the company continued to
focus on traditional film cameras even
when it was clear that the market was
moving towards digital when Kodak
finally got into the digital market they
were selling cameras at a loss and still
couldn't make up enough sales to catch
up to those competitors which had seen
the potential of digital cameras early
on currently Kodak is losing over 200
million dollars a year the lesson
learned in the world of business always
keep an eye on the market and be
responsive to future trends if not it
could cost you everything number five
exite could have bought google for less
than 1 million dollars the year is 1999
and exite was the number two search
engine behind Yahoo Google back then was
a nobody the new kid on the block it was
in the setting back in 99 that Larry
Page offered to sell Google 2 X 8 for
$750,000 according to excise CEO at the
time George Bell the $750,000 deal was
1% of exits worth so financing wasn't an
issue the hiccup came when Larry
insisted that if the sale went ahead
excited was to replace all of its search
technology with Google's George of X I
thought that this was too much and
refused the offer X ayat was eventually
bought by Ask Jeeves now called ascom in
2004 at the time asked had less than 2%
search market share Google
Carolee now known as Alphabet processes
a billion search results every day they
currently have around 147 billion
dollars in assets which is more than one
hundred ninety six thousand times what X
site would have paid for them
ouch number four Blockbuster Video turns
down the opportunity to buy Netflix the
mid-1980s to late 90s when VHS was king
the problem back then was that VHS tapes
would cost upwards of ninety seven
dollars per movie for this reason video
rental stores like Blockbuster came in
to fill in that gap they were the
perfect solution and became a regular
part of weekend plans for hundreds of
millions around the globe imagine the
perfect video school it would
right over 10,000 videos three evening
rebels so no rush no hassle thanks Jenny
24-hour quick drop return open late
every night well the perfect video store
welcome to one master video is popping
up all over the country
there's one near you
but my step in
Wow one yeah eventually
online video streaming services like
Netflix Hulu and even part Locker
destroyed the old video rental business
model ironically in the year 2000
Netflix proposed that it would handle
blockbusters online component and
blockbuster could host Netflix as an
in-store component thus eliminating the
need for mail DVDs which was Netflix's
business model at the time according to
an interview with former Netflix CEO
Barry McAfee blockbuster just laughed
Netflix out of their office but that's
not the end of the story by 2007
blockbuster was well on the right track
they had an Internet Movie component
that was steamrolling over Netflix
Netflix was struggling and their upper
management wanted to sell the company to
Blockbuster to save face blockbusters
growth was very strong at the time so
they turned down the offer in a strange
twist later that year there was a
boardroom dispute over a blockbuster
that saw a change of CEO the new CEO was
Jim Keyes formerly of 7-eleven he came
in with the wrong mindset and thought
that blockbuster should be a retail
business instead of an entertainment one
because of this he didn't see the value
of an online component huge mistake
within 18 months the new CEO had lost
blockbuster 85% of the company's value
and within three years blockbuster was
filing for bankruptcy blockbuster went
belly-up and Netflix went on to thrive
since then Netflix is behind such
original shows such as house of cards
where Jack horsemen and daredevil with
83 million subscriptions worldwide
Netflix has altered the way many view
their entertainment number three a grade
school math error cost NASA 125 million
dollars before the advent of Google did
you ever get frustrated with the
conversions of feet to meters inches to
centimeters did you find it difficult
will you're in good company as it turns
out a similar math problem hindered some
of the greatest minds in the Western
world in 1999 a Mars orbiter that
Lockheed Martin designed for NASA was
lost in space due to a simple math error
we're the engineers at Lockheed used
Imperial measurements while the NASA
employees use metric ones the mismatch
led to the thrusters not receiving vital
navigation information which caused the
125 million dollar spacecraft to
malfunction the probe was forever lost
while trying to get into orbit around
Mars after a 286 day journey
there are numerous occasions where the
error should have been caught but it
wasn't number two Nokia outright
refusing to use Android Nokia one of the
most iconic brands the twentieth century
and even up to the first decade of the
21st century the company had about 51
percent market share of the mobile phone
industry at their peak in 2007 but now
there are shell of their former selves a
fond but distant memory for many the
start of the company's fall from grace
can be attributed to one moment in 2010
when Nokia CEO and C van jockey snob his
nose up at the idea of using Google's
Android software you see at the time
Nokia had their own operating system
called Symbian after the release of the
iPhone in 2007 the software development
team at Nokia realized that there was a
threat so they split into two one team
tried to revamp Symbian and the other
team created an entirely new operating
system named Mego the problem was that
the two teams were battling for
resources from Nokia's top executives so
in essence there was an internal
struggle within the company it was so
bad that whenever Nokia was dealing with
outside stakeholders like chip
manufacturers for example there was so
much squabbling within the company that
has took the better part of a year to
make a decision on anything in the tech
world that's way too long
competitor innovation waits for no one
the logical solution in hindsight of
course was Android Nokia could have used
the open software platform combined it
with their in-house hardware to quickly
make up for lost time at minimal cost
instead Nokia CEO at the time decided to
skip on Android calling it a short-term
solution likening the move to quote
pissing in your pants in the winter to
keep warm end quote
Nokia kept on working on their own
software efforts throwing five billion
dollars a year of R&D at the problem but
to no avail as time went on the iPhone
and Android handsets dominated the
market until Nokia's mobile division was
left in the dust
not long after this in 2013 the Nokia
mobile division brand was salvaged by
Microsoft for scraps Microsoft couldn't
make the once legendary company stay
afloat either wasting 8 billion dollars
before killing the Nokia mobile brand
moral of the story move with innovation
and don't let pride cloud your judgment
but wait a second there is a twist yarm
Nokia the company from Finland is said
to be returning in 2016 after signing an
exclusive agreement with hmd global HMT
global is a new company also based in
Finland the deal will see the creation
of Nokia branded mobile phones and
tablets for the next 10 years so I guess
we'll see how this one plays out number
one
Xerox yes the printer company hands one
of the greatest inventions in computing
history to Apple imagine having one of
the greatest inventions of the 20th
century in your hands and giving it away
because you didn't understand where you
were holding
Xerox did just that with the Xerox Alto
the Xerox Alto was an experimental
computer from 1973 created at Xeroxes
Research Center the alto was way ahead
of its time
it was the first modern desktop PC as we
recognize them today it had a mouse
Windows File managers and could copy and
paste delete and move files
it had icons menus graphics and even a
local area network that connected all
the computers together the idea was to
mimic the office desks but on a screen a
paperless office of the future
absolutely revolutionary for 1973 good
morning you come into your office grab a
cup of coffee morning bread and a Xerox
machine present your morning mail on a
screen
what's the mail this morning looks
interesting let's take a look at this
I'm gonna need a couple of copies of
this push a button and the words and
images you see on the screen appear on
paper oh thank you thank you but I think
everybody on the radical a should see
this push another button and the
information is sent electronically to
similar units around the corner or
around the world this is an experimental
office system it's in use now at the
Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto
California soon Xerox systems like this
will help you manage your most precious
resource information anything else
flowers or wet flowers my anniversary I
forgot what the Xerox Alto is
demonstrating was the first graphical
user interface or GUI in a desktop
computer for those of you not familiar
with this time in computing technology
this is how typical computer from the
late 1970s looked and functioned oh
right press play not yet
first you have to tell the computer to
copy the program that's on the cassette
into its own storage area or memory are
loaded on just type load Loa deep
you've now finished your message so you
need to say over to you to the computer
by pressing the return key on other
computers you'll see a key marked enter
and that also means over to you here
returning over you before GUIs
to do absolutely anything on a computer
you needed to tie commands in lines of
text
if you mistyped anything that was too
bad the computer will just spit out an
error saying it didn't understand
pointing and clicking on a graphical
object was a foreign idea
thousands of Xerox Altos were built at
the research center but never sold only
used heavily in Xerox offices and add a
few universities the Xerox upper
management did not understand what they
had the managers just couldn't see the
vision of what the computer of the
future could be but a man named Steve
Jobs didn't know what the future of the
computer could be and Xerox handed it
straight to him he is out went down
Xerox at the time needed a way to make
their experimental technologies like the
alto cheaper they saw Apple pumping out
the Apple 2 s for a cheap price so in
1979 they invited Steve Jobs over to
their Research Institute to see if he
could help them reduce the cost of
production the deal saw Xerox gain a
million shares of Apple stock in
exchange for Steve Jobs getting the
inside information of everything cool
and revolutionary that was going on at
the Parc Center nobody actually checked
with the guys of the research center but
the upper business development team
signed off on the deal anyway the
following is from Larry Lester azurix
Research Center scientists and an
eyewitness to when Steve Jobs was handed
everything so during that demo Steve
again got very excited he was pacing
around the room and occasionally looking
at the screen he was mostly just looking
and then reacting and taking it all in
and trying to process it
and at one point he said you're still
not showing us everything and the
meaning paused and there were some phone
calls and okay we going to show you more
but jobs was there going what is going
on here you're sitting on a gold mine
why aren't you doing something with this
technology you could change the world
and the red his buddies who were trying
to you know arrange a negotiation of
some kind were trying to quiet him down
don't be so excited but he was it was
really clear to him that we were never
really going to do anything with this
the irony was when they left we'd still
shown them only like 1 percent of what
Park was doing but it was enough that
they've got really excited and decided
they were going to retarget the Lisa to
be something like what they had seen in
terms of graphical user interface they
fell in love with the mouse and that
changed everything and seven months
after that I was working at Apple and
within you know 10 minutes it was
obvious to me that all computers would
work like this some day basically they
were copier hands it just had no clue
about a computer what it could do and so
they they just grabbed grab defeat from
the greatest victory in the computer
industry Xerox could have owned the
entire computer industry today the
graphical approach to the computer
appealed to the human mind because
commands were now replaced with
movements and objects so it felt natural
typing lines of text was now a thing of
the past
the ideas from the Altay would heavily
influence the Apple Lisa whose
technology trickled down to the
Macintosh which influenced Microsoft
Windows both of which were the adventure
ancestors to the manner in which our
phones operate today and a sad thing is
Xerox never gets mentioned for any of
this anyway that's the end of the video
those are six huge blunders by some top
companies I hope you liked it give this
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thanks again guys this has been - gogo
you've been watching cold fusion and
I'll see you again soon for the next
video
cheers and have a good one cold fusion
it's me thinking
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you