A bit later ('98 or '99, I think) I worked at a content/community site for older folks. Intel gave us this odd speech-synth software/API bolted on to a low poly 3D face that could move its lips in vaguely realistic ways. There was a plugin needed to use it in a browser, and we were given money to figure out something useful enough to do with it that people would bother to install the plugin.

Pretty sure you can guess how well that worked. My suggestion, making the tacky 90's robot recite Cartman lines or otherwise swear in ridiculous ways, was... not exactly in alignment with the rest of our content strategy, you might say. And probably not what Intel had in mind. But I bet adoptions would have broken the two-digit barrier.

With numbers that low you could just use the money to pay people to install it.

I mean, it seems like at some point, someone inside Intel should have been capable of saying, "You built this literal talking head and you don't know why, so you're proposing we pay a media company that specializes in health, retirement investing, and old people sex to come up with a reason for us?"

You are correct. It was basically a giant "iMac": all-in-one-server-box the size of a small room with racks and roll out keyboards. They were TRYING to write what would become cloud services, but they didn't have the talent: the team was pulled from all over and had no experience in backend/devops let alone the nascent linux kernal that was starting to blossom.

A former colleague worked for them in those days and had insane stories. They would fly him first class to Oregon from Virginia or Jersey every two weeks, just for a staff meeting!

Intel would fly Fellow Fred Pollock flew back and forth between Cali and his home in Florida for years in the late 80's early 90's. The guy was OG brilliant, for REAL, but it still was funny that he had Intel by the shorties.

20 years ago at Intel the description was Intel is a Fab company that designs microprocessors and motherboard chip sets on the side.

I think they have a tendency to ditch products prematurely. They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear. They even do this to divisions that are actually turning a profit. Which goes over really badly with their customers.

I seem to recall Linley Gwennap or someone at the Microprocessor Report saying that this was because these other industries were too different, in terms of R&D requirements and margins, from Intel’s core business, making PC CPUs; none of these other businesses could ever produce the margins that Intel would need and none of them required the level of R&D that Intel could direct at them. This was when Intel was about to debut Larrabee.

Yes, that is 100% accurate. Their core competency is making wafers. CPUs specifically, high margin servers, low margin latop parts, ... and then chipsets (so many chipsets). Everything else is just a toe in the water. (Their investing arm also does quite well.)

> They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear.

Amazon was far from the first company to do cloud. For instance, Sun Microsystems pushed it in the 90s, and Loudcloud, I mean "Opsware" did it in 2003.

I think the difference was that Amazon committed to it for a loooooong time.

Any counterexamples besides Itanium?

Itanium isn’t a good example because HP heavily subsidized its continuation after a few years. Without that cash, Intel would’ve (justifiably) killed it then.