Comments on: 5 Companies That Will Fail This Year

By: Home Based Job

Home Based Job — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:10:09 +0000

By: John Labriola

John Labriola — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:16:25 +0000

1. Nope. MS is going no where but up. With Live Office coming out and their interest in small business application suites, I expect that they will forward this year. And don’t forget MSN is finally making money. As far as the OS goes, I agree with the other guy. People on PC’s see those “new” features as new. After all how many people using PC’s ever get a chance to use OSx?

2. Creative. I somewhat agree, although they are killing the Shuffle with the Nomad MuVo. The Zen (nor anyone else) can seem to crack the iPod’s stranglehold.

3. I don’t know if you can compare iTunes and Google video. gVideo works more like Froogle than iTunes. But I do agree Yahoo is doing a much better job than Google when it comes to releasing products. Google still gets all the attention though.

4. I agree.

5. Hmmm. Yes and No. I think some companies can and will make the shift. But I see a lot more failing. But maybe not this year, it will probably take a lot more. For example, local town/county papers seem to be doing well. However the trend over the past 2o years or so has been consolidation in the media content business. Look for this just to continue…

Company to watch: Apple. I see Jobs as either keeping the feeling alive or squashing it. No medium switch for that man! But Apple has to get away from being overly propiatary. Sony tell you all about that.

That’s my two cents…

By: Jeff Adams

Jeff Adams — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 04:55:19 +0000

I think creative will fail in more than just their mp3 players. The add-in sound card is all but dead. Creative is the only major player in the consumer sound market. With the quality of onboard sound getting better and better there is really no need to purchase a separate card.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:41:32 +0000

Is design a silver bullet? Of course it isn’t but great design is more than aesthetics. Is the iPod a pretty player with a clunky interface? Nope. That’s how I see Google Video could improve by design.

As for talking about the tools, nobody talks about Word anymore because it has become the de facto standard of word processing. Blogging software doesn’t have that yet so yes I think it’s important that people talk about the tools. I see WordPress users talking about the tools all the time (this site uses mt so don’t call me a fanboy please).

Goolge and Microsoft can fail in certain categories simply because they own in so many others. How many categories does 6A dominate?

By: Danjo

Danjo — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 13:23:10 +0000

Hi, thanks for your article 1st as a writer I know it takes time and effort.

But I am guessing you use apple computers? Or at the very least wish you did? Just guessing as I do not know you, but are you aware you mentioned Apple as the reason for 3 companies impending failure?

Not logical or true.

My 2 cents.

By: Anil Dash

Anil Dash — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:11:55 +0000

I always say I won’t get trolled into these things, but…

I definitely think that we at Six Apart are hoping to fail in the same grand manner that companies like Google and Microsoft have. :)

And I’d say that *all* the people on our platforms don’t talk about the tools that much — mostly because they’re busy talking about their lives, or their work, or the business at hand, not the technology. As I understand it, most Microsoft Word documents don’t mention the word processor, and most Gmail messages don’t mention the email client.

Somehow, those businesses are able to eke out a living.

By: Leopold Porkstacker

Leopold Porkstacker — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:51:35 +0000

HP. They will have issues this year due to severe financial setbacks. After the recent ousting of Carly Fiornia to the tune of $25 million, and the luring onboard of former NCR CEO Mark Hurd to the tune of $22 million, I was impacted along with many thousand other employees who had vision. That’s just my prediction; I could be wrong.

-he who stacks pork

By: Sammy

Sammy — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:32:03 +0000

#6 “I also wanted to mention that there is also a big opportunity out there”

Have you guys seen KolaBlog? It’s Awesome!!
Check it out at: http://www.kolablog.com

By: christ

christ — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:09:48 +0000

Great to see a brilliant content here. It’s always interesting to see different viewpoints.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 08:05:13 +0000

With a definition of failure as vague as you are giving, you’re hardly going out on a limb. Your predictions are either so vague as to be useless (SixApart) or arguable without more specifics (Google).

Making a controversial claim is only the first part of making a good blog argument…