Sears owned Prodigy on-line originally (jointly with IBM). If anything they were above the curve in that regard. But just like Microsoft and their satellite map

Sears owned Prodigy on-line originally (jointly with IBM). If anything they were above the curve in that regard. But just like Microsoft and their satellite maps (years before Google Earth), they didn't push those technologies in the right direction. IBM and Microsoft are still around (kinda surprisingly, at least for IBM, when you think about how old the company really is. I mean they sold punch cards to the Nazis). Sears was literally the Amazon of the 1900s. Everything could be bought from their catalogues and they pushed those catalogues harder than Tigers Direct. It shows that no matter how big you are, other similar companies can easily go the same way. I wonder if Amazon, Facebook and Google will still be as big when I retire, or if they'll be in a decline or dead.