Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

news.ycombinator.com

241–250 of 648 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#242

Aereo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo The Supreme Court decision that killed the company is an excellent example of what happens when jurists don't understand technology... And don't want to, either.

Aereo deserved to die. They were a scummy company that lied and deceived at every turn.

Aereo actually had some good arguments, but they were so shady that there was no way anybody was going to believe them when the time came.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#243
Google glass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

A pure ingenious effort to turn humans into cyborg by adding the 4th dimension of computing to their lives in a non intrusive and seamless way. I can never understand why google couldn't make it popular given that wearable tech like watches and fitness band is catching up so quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#244

Gowalla. Using geographical location to find digital items way before Ingress and Pokemon Go. The design was gorgeous too.

Geomon was a really fun game that was almost exactly what Pokemon Go became, but without as hard of a "grind" feel to it, but Yahoo bought it and killed it.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/4bn-mistake-yahoo-bought-precursor...

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#246

Oculus and other VR headset. VR as a technology is fascinating and almost Sci-Fi when it came in but people quickly realized that there are still no practical applications for the technology other than mild gaming and entertainment purposes. Companies invested heavily in VR but the ROI is poor till today. VR is mostly a one time experience for people and not something they spend time with everyday.

One of the founders is a neighbor.. $20m later. They lucked out with FB/Zuck frothing over their company so early.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#247
post #211

WinAmp ICQ

Winamp development may be in limbo today, but I would never call it a failed product. It thrived very well, influenced a lot of future products, and also still lives with many users including me.

WINAMP! It really whips the llama's ass.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#248

JavaFX Silverlight Adobe AIR

This has to be a joke, right? I’m not informed enough to know, but it seems like I’ve only heard negative stuff about these.

About AIR you probably heard hate from people who hated flash. I loved it, (the technology, not Adobe) but also switched plattforms.

Node is a mess compared to it.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#249
post #89

Google Inbox. And I don’t “find my favorite Inbox features in Gmail”. If you can’t tell I’m still bitter about it :(

Just curious, which features are you bitter about? I was a long-time Inbox user and was dreading the day I'd have to switch back to Gmail. But now that I've done it, I've found that I don't really miss Inbox at all.

For me, it was the way purchases and travel info were displayed.

Right before the shutdown I've booked a fight and hotel for a conference in June and it was showing as a big card in inbox. After the gmail switch there is nothing displayed, I have to go hunting for confirmation emails. So sad to see inbox go.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#250
post #112
post #20

Usenet, IRC, RSS, XMPP, ... Well, still rockin'

The game Warframe uses IRC for its in-game chat. They've obfuscated the authentication though, so it's not possible to just login with something like irssi. I'm sure other games do this as well.

Osu! also uses IRC for it's game chat, but it's not obfuscated . IRC is good enough for game chat, you don't really need anything more, unless you want to integrate voice-comms too. Actually, I once made multiplayer-over-IRC in a game jam, as the interface is so simple and flexible.
Post reply on HN