Worst Tech Purchases - Ever!
Sure you could make a mistake and blow $600 on PlayStation 3 this holiday season. However, that amount of moola isn’t even close to what was spent in some of the worse tech spending sprees of all time. Don Dodge, a member of Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, highlights the Top Ten Worst Tech Spending Sprees of all Time - a sample:
8. Overture - Acquired by Yahoo for $1.6B in October 2003. Yahoo has spent the last year of so building “Panama” which will replace most of the Overture technology. There is some value left in Overture…but not much.
7. AltaVista - CMGI acquired a controlling stake in AltaVista from Compaq Computer for $2.3 Billion in June 1999. Later acquired by Overture for $140M.
6. GeoCities - acquired by Yahoo! in May 1999 for $3.56 billion
5. Netscape - acquired by AOL in November 1998 for $4.2 billion.
4. Broadcast.com - acquired by Yahoo! in July 1999 for $5.7 billion.
Hmmmm…. Yahoo does appear to have bought a whole lot. Perhaps there might be redundancies there?
Oddly enough, there isn’t a single mention of a Microsoft acquisition on the list. Is that because Microsoft has been incredibly shrewd with its purchases? Is this revisionist history? Or is Microsoft just content to blow it’s money in it’s own unique way?
