One of the really sad things that big rich tech companies do is invest tens of millions of dollars in solving problems that don’t exist. Whether it’s Google “improving” Craig’s List and Wikipedia with Base and Know, or Microsoft with their new Sphere display, you’ve got to wonder how these things get born.
I suspect a big part is guys sitting around going “wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” or “did you see that movie on Sci-Fi where . . . “ The budget gets approved because you can’t just give all that cash to employees, and you sure as heck aren’t going to send it to the shareholders.
The other reason it gets approved is because in tech, no one wants to crap on “vision” because that’s not the culture. It’s like the Emperor has no clothes when it comes to cool new ideas.
What fat, rich high tech companies really need is some kind of market mechanism that prunes out stupid ideas at the $5 million and $15 million investment marks. That’s where the venture community does it with their A rounds and B rounds. That way, engineers and product managers have to worry about building something valuable really fast. Because they’ll get lose their job if they don’t.
Meanwhile, some lifer at Microsoft has spent years building a feature called “send it to the dark” side. Now, they’re trying to claim this thing is useful because of better privacy? Give me a break.
