Just because you’re the biggest doesn’t mean you’re the best.. at least not in my book. Perhaps you’re only the biggest because all the other competitors are dumb.. not because you’re great. Have you ever felt that way towards a certain company or business? I certainly have. Here are some fails and mistakes made by some modern day tech giants that we all like or use.
Google fails:
- If you’re in an Arab country (or any non-English country), when you open Google first time, or when you open Blogger, it opens in Arabic language or in the native language of the country you’re in… What if you hate that language or what if you can’t understand it?! What if you’re a foreigner who can’t understand it?! You can search for the change language button, which is hidden and hard to find, and after you find it an hour later, you can change the language back to English. But wait! It’s written in Arabic TOO! So how the heck would the foreigner know how to read “????” and change it to “English” when they can’t even understand what it says?!
- Adwords: when running an Adwords campaign, you don’t have any option of setting a maximum budget limit. So if you get busy or forget your campaign running for an extra day or two, you’re in trouble because you’ll get charged! A lot! This typically happens with new users who still aren’t really used to using Adwords. Adwords gives out some free credits to some new users. The new users set up and run a campaign, and often fall into this trap. They forget to turn off their campaigns after reaching their budget limit, and the campaign keeps on running and charging them. Some even say this strategy is a bit “scammy” because it exploits human weakness or ignorance. They have a point. How hard is it to give us an option of setting a budget limit?!
- Adsense: it has no clear FAQ! What kind of website has no clear FAQ section?! Furthermore, Adsense has a reputation of disabling your account without specifying any clear reason! One day you’re waiting to cash out your account’s revenues, the next day it’s all gone! No questions asked, “this is an auto generated email”, “we can’t tell you any more details”. Perfect.
Facebook fail:
- It should be known as the social network that punishes you for being social. Or maybe the anti-social network. The reason is, Facebook blocks and disables your account if you send too many friend requests or messages too fast. What kind of “social” network punishes you for being social and trying to meet new people and make new friends?! How the hell are you first supposed to add your friends? And how the hell are you supposed to make new friends? Come on. That’s totally ridiculous!
Microsoft fails:
- Windows: it can be so disappointing sometimes. First they release a buggy useless ugly Windows Vista… and then they release a better yet still buggy Windows 7! What kind of established company releases a buggy product?! It took a long while and a whole lot of updates before Windows 7 became stable. You don’t just implement the “lean startup method” on products when you’re an already established company that has millions of users. There’s a big chance you might lose a huge chunk of them.
- Hotmail: If your account gets hacked or phished and gets suspended, you can reactivate it by sending a code to your phone. But guess what; it doesn’t send to all countries! So if you’re in Lebanon for example, there’s no way for you to confirm the SMS code and re-activate your email! You’d have to send the code to one of your friends living abroad and have them send it to you. Why the heck do they have this service if it doesn’t cater to all countries?! Wait there’s more. Recently, when Hotmail evolved into “Outlook”, it was buggy and didn’t work for 2 or 3 whole days! How do they expect to keep their users like that?! I literally wasn’t able to open my received emails for 3 whole days! What kind of developers do you employ?! Way to go.
- MSN Messenger: This was once THE BEST instant messaging client EVER. I’m talking about the time when you had those OLD cool perfectly expressive emoticons… and when you had the awesomely fun hand-write tool option. But no, they always had to keep “updating” and “upgrading” it! And when they had new versions ready, they would disable the old versions! The new versions were crappy as hell! The service wasn’t always reliable, they removed the hand-write tool, and they replaced the old emoticons with new really ugly ones where you couldn’t tell a smile from a frown! What were they thinking?! When you “upgrade”, you’d expect the new product to be better not worse! They expected people to still use that thing?! Meanwhile, as terrible as it was back then, Facebook chat was emerging and stealing new users. What kind of genius client retention strategy were the folks at MSN using!? :@ (this emoticon shortcut once universally meant something!). I can keep going on about Microsoft; I can find a million other things, but let’s move on for now.
Adobe fails:
- We love Flash! Then one day, just because Apple decides to drop Flash support on mobile devices, and because HTML5 is born, Adobe decides to drop Flash too. Just like that, it decides to drop one of its main products. What kind of company bails out on one of its own successful products that it once worked so hard to make successful?! And the reason being just because this other big company dropped support for it! What happened to loyalty, self respect, and self belief in one’s own products? And by the way, just because Apple’s phones and tablets are too darn slow to handle it doesn’t mean Flash is bad. Did you possibly consider that those lame slow phones and tablets are the ones that are bad!? Right. Run along, hipsters.
- Another one from Adobe that I’m aware of is that it released a faulty Premier Pro CS3 software. The fault is in its rendering engine. It takes hours to render a short simple video, where as it takes just minutes in the newer fixed CS versions. Did they even test it before releasing the software?!
Apple fails:
- Apple disappoints for several reasons. First, their products are more expensive than other brands. Second, their products only work with other Apple products and don’t support other devices, as in you can’t sync with a PC and can’t send via Bluetooth. And third, their mobile devices don’t support Flash. That’s annoying and lame! Way to go.
- I can find many other disappointing things for Apple, but I’m not really an Apple fan so I haven’t used or tested all their products. I mean what kind of lame computer mouse doesn’t have a clear right click?! And no, MACs aren’t really more stable than PCs, because your “application has unexpectedly quit”! Thank you very much!
Nokia fail:
- For many years, they were the giant leader in the mobile world… then they lost it all by falling behind on technology. While the competition was busy innovating, they were busy making more lamely and confusingly similar phone types and models. Then reality hit. How did they try to catch up? By releasing new phones with a crappy buggy Symbian OS: Symbian Anna & Belle on their new flagship N8, C7 and other new smartphone series. What kind of company releases a faulty buggy product!? That move definitely cost them even the last of their loyal die-hard fans. Way to go Nokia.
Paypal fail:
- Paypal has been operating since 1998. It’s 2013 now and we still don’t have Paypal in Lebanon. The same goes for some other 3rd world countries. Only this year did Paypal start to think of deploying and making its service available in Lebanon. Seriously?! It took them 15 years to think about it?!
This concludes our article about the fails and mistakes of some of our beloved tech giants. What did you think? Do you agree to what was said? Do you have any other suggestions on issues or companies to include here? Let us know.
