Re:Loon and Wing graduate from Google/Alphabet X
by mintplant on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @09:02PM
(#17511460)
> The Amazon Kindle came out of Lab 126, Amazon's innovation program.
I know this from all the com.lab126 Java packages in the firmware :)
Re:Loon and Wing graduate from Google/Alphabet X
by vl on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @06:14PM
(#17510701)
Well, ereaders and ebooks are really obvious things to develop if you are in selling physical books business.
Re:Loon and Wing graduate from Google/Alphabet X
by sjm-lbm on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @06:41PM
(#17510819)
Not if you're Kodak and making film.
Or, at least, the technology might have been obvious (they did have a hand in developing digital cameras), but the idea that they should bet big on the new technology eventually replacing them evidently wasn't obvious.
Re:Loon and Wing graduate from Google/Alphabet X
by frankchn on Thursday July 12, 2018 @02:54AM
(#17512715)
It is even worse than that for Kodak -- Steven Sasson actually created the first digital camera using a CCD sensor while working at Kodak [1] and Kodak owned the patent for a digital camera [2].
[1]: https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Kodak-engineer-ha... [2]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4131919
Re:Loon and Wing graduate from Google/Alphabet X
by pfdietz on Thursday July 12, 2018 @07:34AM
(#17513577)
For a company in Kodak's position, trying to reinvent themselves may not have been the best idea. Another possibility would have been to recognize that the basis for the company was going away and attempt to milk it for as much money as possible as it died. If this meant paying large dividends then shutting down or carving up the remnants of the company, so be it.
The idea isn't just to remain dynamic, but to allow for new products and services to be developed despite posing a threat to the company's main cash cow.
So Lab126 was completely independent from most of Amazon, including being based in the Bay Area vs. Seattle. This allowed the to develop a product that went directly against the main cash cow at the time (selling physical books) and make it to market.
Microsoft had one as well, but would always fail because the existing businesses heads held too much power, and would always kill the products. Just take a look at the history of the Surface.