all 12 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 35 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Weird considering like, we finally have the technology for a polite but consistently wrong internet butler.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    I mean, Sears built a massive business empire via mail order and shipping products, and now effectively no longer exists. Amazon directly replaced them with the same business model just digitized, despite starting as just a bookstore.

    Not utilizing evolving tech that seems like an obvious match for a company is surprisingly common.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Same thing with Blockbuster and Netflix. Netflix even turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for $50m, and today Netflix is worth ~$400,000,000,000.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago

    I was working at Blockbuster when that went down. We then rolled our our own mail order dvd service and honestly...it was better and it still failed. you could order movies and games online, get them delivered, then just drop them off at your local blockbuster and instantly switch them out for free for whatever was next in your queue and STILL have movies coming in via mail. I saw customers coming in daily just switching movies and games out. Management figured "oh people will come in when they return their mail ins and get more and pay more for extra stuff" nope. people came in and swapped out exactly for the free movies or ones already in queue and that was it. no extras. I remember doing entire shifts where I did zero financial transactions.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Oh man, the end of an era.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    it was there before answers.com and then yahoo answers, and then Y/A shut down in 2021 and then it was reddit.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Saw a video on this. Apprently it was human curated responses so it couldn't keep up.

  • source