硅谷历史_硅谷历史上9个最愚蠢的决定

硅谷历史

Silicon Valley may be the mecca for genius entrepreneurs, but a lot of stupidity is floating around here, too. While tech titans want to change the world, innovate, and make loads of cash with their shrewd business sense, it doesn’t always work out that way.

小号 ilicon谷可能是天才企业家的圣地，但很多愚蠢的在这里左右浮动，太。 尽管技术巨头希望凭着精明的业务意识来改变世界，进行创新并赚取大量现金，但并非总是能做到这一点。

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订阅《 The Bold Italic》时事通讯， 即可每周在收件箱中获取湾区的精华。

We’ve gathered nine of the stupidest decisions ever made in the tech world below.

在下面的技术世界中，我们收集了九个最愚蠢的决定。

这些失败的关键 (The key to these failures)

* = lack of foresight. A company or individual didn’t correctly judge the future of an industry or see the potential in a product.

* =缺乏远见。 公司或个人没有正确判断行业的未来或看不到产品的潜力。

^= avoiding disruption to a current cash cow. An individual or company was too afraid to disrupt their current successful model and adapt before rendered irrelevant.

^ =避免破坏当前的摇钱树。 个人或公司太害怕破坏他们当前的成功模式并在变得无关紧要之前进行调整。

1. Western Union通过电话* (1. Western Union passed up the telephone*)

After Alexander Graham Bell invented and patented the telephone in the 1870s, he approached Western Union, which at the time reigned king in communications with its sending and delivering of the telegram. Bell asked for $100,000, but the company declined, saying: “While it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities… What use could this company make of an electrical toy?”

亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔 ( Alexander Graham Bell)在1870年代发明了电话并为其申请了专利后，他与西联汇款 ( Western Union)取得了联系。 贝尔要价10万美元，但该公司拒绝了：“虽然这是一个非常有趣的新颖性，但我们得出的结论是，它没有商业可能性……这家公司可以将电动玩具用于什么用途？”

Later, when the telephone became popular, Western Union hired inventors including Thomas Edison to design a more sophisticated version. Bell sued for patent infringement and won; Bell Telephone dominated the telephone industry for many years.

后来，当电话普及时，西联汇款(Western Union)雇用了包括托马斯·爱迪生(Thomas Edison)在内的发明家来设计更复杂的版本。 贝尔起诉专利侵权并胜诉； 贝尔电话多年来一直主导电话行业。

2.英特尔拒绝为iPhone *生产芯片 (2. Intel declined to manufacture chips for the iPhone*)

Apple initially approached Intel with a deal to manufacture chips for the iPhone in 2007. Intel executives thought they wouldn’t sell enough phones to offset the cost of manufacturing the chips, so they declined. Paul Otellini, then-CEO of Intel, later said:

苹果最初在2007年与英特尔达成了为iPhone生产芯片的协议。英特尔高管认为，他们不会出售足够的手机来抵消芯片的制造成本，因此他们拒绝了。 时任英特尔首席执行官的保罗·欧德宁(Paul Otellini)随后说：

The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do. At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.

您要记住的是，这是在iPhone推出之前，没有人知道iPhone会做什么。 最终，他们感兴趣的是一种芯片，他们想支付一定的价格而不是多付镍，并且该价格低于我们的预测成本。 我看不到 这不是您可以大量弥补的事情之一。 事后看来，预测成本是错误的，交易量是任何人的100倍。

3.柯达推迟生产数码相机^ (3. Kodak held off on making digital cameras^)

The digital camera was first invented by Kodak engineer Steven Sasson in 1975, however Kodak held off on releasing it, fearing the digital camera would cut too much into their camera film business. Eventually, of course, Sony and Fuji brand digital cameras took off, and Kodak was left in the dust.

数码相机是柯达工程师史蒂文·萨森(Steven Sasson)于1975年首次发明的，但柯达却推迟了发布，因为担心数码相机会在他们的胶卷业务中削减太多。 最终，当然，索尼和富士品牌的数码相机起飞了，柯达被尘封了。

4. AOL购买了时代华纳* (4. AOL bought Time Warner*)

In what was the largest merger in American history, AOL bought a 55% stake in Time Warner for $162 million in 2000. Needless to say, the deal resulted in failure. Some cite clashing corporate cultures for the flop, and others say that AOL and Time Warner just couldn’t adapt quickly enough to a changing media tech landscape. In 2015, Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion, which is about 3% of Verizon’s annual revenue.

在美国历史上规模最大的合并中，AOL在2000年以1.62亿美元的价格购买了时代华纳55％的股份。不用说，这笔交易导致失败。 一些人认为企业文化在失败时会发生冲突 ，另一些人则说AOL和时代华纳只是不能足够Swift地适应不断变化的媒体技术格局。 2015年，Verizon以44亿美元的价格收购了AOL，约占Verizon年收入的3％。

5. Excite本可以购买Google ^ (5. Excite could have bought Google^)

In 1999, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin showed their new search engine to Excite, which was a web portal launched in 1995 that provided a search engine, email, and basic features like the news and weather. Excite CEO George Bell worried that the engine was too good, and that people would find what they needed too fast, instead of spending time in the Excite portal. Page and Brin offered Google for $1 million, then the offer was lowered to $750,000. Excite declined. Oops.

1999年，Google创始人拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)和谢尔盖·布林(Sergey Brin)向Excite展示了他们的新搜索引擎，这是1995年推出的一个门户网站，提供搜索引擎，电子邮件以及新闻和天气等基本功能。 激发CEO乔治·贝尔担心发动机是太出色了 ，而且人们会发现他们所需要的速度太快，而不是在激励门户网站花费的时间。 佩奇和布林以100万美元的价格向Google出价，后来报价降为75万美元。 兴奋拒绝了。 哎呀。

6.雅虎也没有收购Google ^ (6. Yahoo didn’t acquire Google, either^)

Yahoo also had a chance to acquire Google. Page and Brin were motivated to sell in order to focus on their studies at Stanford, but Yahoo turned down a $1 million asking price for the new company because Yahoo wanted users to spend more time on Yahoo, not some other engine. Oops again.

雅虎也有机会收购谷歌。 佩奇和布林有动力进行出售，以便专注于在斯坦福大学的学习，但雅虎拒绝了这家新公司的100万美元要价，因为雅虎希望用户在雅虎上花更多的时间，而不是在其他引擎上花更多的时间。 再次糟糕。

7.雅达利和惠普超越苹果* (7. Atari and HP passing up Apple*)

Apple founder Steve Jobs and his team initially wanted to work with a company like Atari or HP. According to Jobs, this is how it went down:

苹果公司创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯和他的团队最初想与Atari或HP这样的公司合作。 根据乔布斯的说法 ，这是怎么回事：

So we went to Atari and said, “Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.” And they said, “No.” So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, “Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”

所以我们去了雅达利(Atari)说：“嘿，即使您使用了某些零件，我们还是有一件了不起的事情，您如何看待我们的资金呢？ 否则我们会把它给你。 我们只想这样做。 支付我们的薪水，我们会为您服务。” 他们说：“不。” 于是我们去了惠普，他们说：“嘿，我们不需要你。 您还没有大学毕业。”

8.鲁珀特·默多克(Rupert Murdoch)购买并摧毁了MySpace * (8. Rupert Murdoch bought and ruined MySpace*)

There are several hypothesized reasons why MySpace died. One of them is that after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, he flooded the site with ads, which caused people to flitter over to Facebook, which was ad-free at the time.

MySpace死亡的原因有几个推测的原因。 其中之一是，鲁珀特·默多克(Rupert Murdoch)的新闻集团(News Corporation)在2005年以5.8亿美元收购了MySpace之后，他在该网站上充斥着广告，这引起了人们的关注，当时Facebook当时没有广告。

9. Ross Perot通过了Microsoft * (9. Ross Perot passed on Microsoft*)

Ross Perot is a billionaire who made his money creating computer systems. In 1979, he could have bought Microsoft for a cool $40–$60 million, but he thought it was ridiculous at the time.

罗斯·佩罗(Ross Perot)是一位亿万富翁，他靠创造计算机系统赚钱。 1979年，他本可以以40到6000万美元的高价收购Microsoft，但他当时认为这太荒谬了。

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翻译自: https://thebolditalic.com/9-stupidest-decisions-of-silicon-valley-4998b31641fa

硅谷历史