Again, they sold it for a one-billion-dollar loss, it was and still is a terrible idea and got IBM into an area where they had no idea how to make it work.
Go back in history, it’s full of companies doing the same thing, Eastman-Kodak is gone regardless of all the patents they owned, Sear is basically gone, even though they were the Walmart of the yesteryear, the list is endless of companies that lost track of what they did and hired managers who knew even less and it cost them and millions of employees dearly.
You haven’t lived until you’ve watches 30-40 people crowd around a fax machine on a Friday afternoon, sweating because they knew layoffs were getting announced via fax, two faxes came in, one for those who could come back on Monday and those who were done, many of them 30-year loyal employees and watch them leaving the office crying like babies.
You haven’t lived until a good friend of yours’s calls you on Sunday night so nervous he was stone cold drunk from fear of losing his job all due to the incompetence of management who all walked away with bonuses.
You haven’t lived until you’ve been called by the Government asking about layoffs or called by attorney’s asking you testify against the company you are working for about firing older employees in favor of younger employees.
You haven’t lived until you’ve been called by your direct manager asking you to talk to your friend about retiring because he’s told old and costing the company too much money.
“IBM into an area where they had no idea how to make it work.”
That is your interpretation. For them it was always about the data, not about becoming a major web presence.
They were not trying to repeat the Microsoft error of trying to be a major web presence (MSNBC - a total disaster for Microsoft). That was never how IBM saw the weather channel tie in.
“Europe is killing itself primarily with their insane “climate” policies and EU morons. Just like the US.”
I think that Europe is failing because faster than here in the U.S. laws, policies and attitudes are killing free speech. Killing free speech means issues enter a state of stasis, not a dynamic state, so cultural orthodxy takes over and chane becomes harder and harder to get out of it, with different view always killed in one way or anoter.
Example - a man, a minister, in the U.K., was arrested for preaching against abortion in public, in a public space and the charge was a “hate crime”.
To me free speech is core to western civilization and when it dies (when it is killed) western civilization will be commiting suicide.