Re:Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas
by megablast on Saturday March 10, 2012 @11:11AM
(#3688001)
Sorry, Sony was a great engineering company, worthy of being respected, until they sold out and became a content creation company. Look at how the hobbled the mini-disc years ago. Sony deserves absolutely no respect these days.
While I can totally see where you are coming from, I think it is not fair to say that sony does not deserve any respect whatsoever anymore. They were innovators at first, too and have come a long way since.
I do not agree with sony's content creation affairs, however they continue to innovate with good products (e.g. look at the digital cameras, camera sensors etc.)
More often than not, there is no clear distinction between good and bad, certainly less so with amazingly huge companies such as sony, apple, exxon etc.
The key is 'gave'. Past tense.
I think a lot more start-up people would fear (or even care about) Microsoft if Bill Gates was still running it. The same goes for the rest of the companies you mention.
I don't agree with PG when he is talking about Apple. "None of them are run by product visionaries" is simply not true. Steve Jobs had great respect for companies like Sony because there are product visionary companies. Sony, IBM, Philips, and a lot of others, all companies that gave us great products we now are using every day. But it took years to get there.
E-ink for example was created in 1997 and is still in development. But we all know e-readers. A great example of a visionary product imho.