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FYI: My neighbor developed something similar in the 70s. It was purchased by a large pantyhose company for many millions with additional revenue promised from royalties from future sales. As soon as they owned it they killed the product to maintain their revenue stream from short-lived hose. The inventor lost millions from sales that never happened. Don't let this happen to you. If you are successful, they will come knocking.



I'm always looking for evidence of planned obsolescense [1] but I didn't realize how effectively it has been implemented by "Big Pantyhose" and that move to buy out and phase out a superior product - deviously brilliant!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence


There are some other examples from Bill Gates/Microsoft in this reddit thread [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3aicvf/what_vill...


I have another one for you: Google >> Aadvark


How is this a good example ? What's the quickly obsolete thing Google pushed to effectively kill Aardvark ?

I'm with you that I'd like some better question answering service, but I don't think it's fair to blame Google for not trying ...


Maybe, you have gathered some info about planned obsolescence ? I find that subject very interesting too.


Thanks for the tip. I could totally see them doing something like that. Anything to hold on to the legacy business, even if it means killing innovation.




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