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Stupid idea still stupid idea and they’re hoping everyone will forget.

by setquk 8y ago

scarejunba 8y ago
Amazon has no fear of failure. The Fire phone comes to mind. They roll with the punches and just go on to the next product. They also have the scale to explore every ‘stupid idea’ to some degree. Good for them. I doubt they’re “hoping everyone will forget”. More they just abandon what doesn’t work.
- kjullien 8y ago
  This is pretty much the spirit of Google too, start a service, have no users, discontinue service. The problem with this is that most of these ideas don't work because they are usually too early for their time. Which is quite stupid when you think about it retroactively. If they kept going at it, Google could of had a successful social media platform (Dodgeball), they discontinued the v1 of Instagram, Picasa and they could of been Foursquare with Hotpot... Now the question is was it a good idea to stop these and maybe save a couple hundred K a year ? Retroactively, of course no, but I would argue that even at the time it was a bad idea, why waste RnD when you can easily afford to keep it going for decades without it generating any profit... Move fast and break things but don't trash them...
vorticalbox 8y ago
I think everyone knows by now that the internet does not forget.
veidr 8y ago
It wasn't a stupid idea, it was just an especially shameless lie. We all knew it was bullshit; Amazon must have also known it. But they bullshitted their way to an astonishing degree of news coverage. Probably a majority of local news channels covered it, as did almost all the major newspapers. Like many of you here probably were, I was asked about it by all sorts of nontechnical friends / relatives / strangers who just found out I do software and robotics / etc. I personally am not hoping everyone will forget; I'm hoping they will remember me saying "Oh, no, that's bullshit — it's just a money-losing marketing stunt, not something that they will actually start doing."
arethuza 8y ago
Ryanair had a similar strategy of making weird announcements just, it would appear, to get publicity (e.g. coin operated toilets on flights, allowing gambling on flights and reducing fares to zero).
sytelus 8y ago
Not stupid by any stretch, if you are in China. Alibaba is already making drone deliveries in Shanghai. A company in China called JD is amassing big fleet for drone delivery as well. https://www.popsci.com/china-drone-deliveries https://www.popsci.com/china-drone-deliveries

Stupid idea still stupid idea and they’re hoping everyone will forget.

by setquk 8y ago

Stupid idea still stupid idea and they’re hoping everyone will forget.

Amazon has no fear of failure. The Fire phone comes to mind. They roll with the punches and just go on to the next product. They also have the scale to explore every ‘stupid idea’ to some degree. Good for them. I doubt they’re “hoping everyone will forget”. More they just abandon what doesn’t work.

kjullien 8y ago
This is pretty much the spirit of Google too, start a service, have no users, discontinue service. The problem with this is that most of these ideas don't work because they are usually too early for their time. Which is quite stupid when you think about it retroactively. If they kept going at it, Google could of had a successful social media platform (Dodgeball), they discontinued the v1 of Instagram, Picasa and they could of been Foursquare with Hotpot... Now the question is was it a good idea to stop these and maybe save a couple hundred K a year ? Retroactively, of course no, but I would argue that even at the time it was a bad idea, why waste RnD when you can easily afford to keep it going for decades without it generating any profit... Move fast and break things but don't trash them...

vorticalbox 8y ago

I think everyone knows by now that the internet does not forget.

veidr 8y ago

It wasn't a stupid idea, it was just an especially shameless lie. We all knew it was bullshit; Amazon must have also known it. But they bullshitted their way to an astonishing degree of news coverage. Probably a majority of local news channels covered it, as did almost all the major newspapers. Like many of you here probably were, I was asked about it by all sorts of nontechnical friends / relatives / strangers who just found out I do software and robotics / etc. I personally am not hoping everyone will forget; I'm hoping they will remember me saying "Oh, no, that's bullshit — it's just a money-losing marketing stunt, not something that they will actually start doing."

arethuza 8y ago

Ryanair had a similar strategy of making weird announcements just, it would appear, to get publicity (e.g. coin operated toilets on flights, allowing gambling on flights and reducing fares to zero).

sytelus 8y ago

Not stupid by any stretch, if you are in China. Alibaba is already making drone deliveries in Shanghai. A company in China called JD is amassing big fleet for drone delivery as well. https://www.popsci.com/china-drone-deliveries https://www.popsci.com/china-drone-deliveries