Geeky Catastrophes

Sometimes people see the great advances in technology and forget that all has not been smooth sailing in this world of geeky geniuses. In a recent ZDNet post, titled Ten catastrophes: All-time worst tech industry executive decisions, Jason Perlow outs some pretty poor decisions. Consider a few of executives from their list who blundered big:

• Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard: Compaq Merger :: The PC business that HP gained from the Compaq merger is now in the process of being spun off, after losing money in the face of tremendous low-margin industry competition.

• Steve Ballmer: Windows Vista :: Nobody knows how much the Vista debacle really cost Microsoft, but it damaged the company's reputation and almost certainly amounted to billions of dollars of stalled upgrades and a significant exodus of users to Apple’s Mac platform.
• John Sculley, Apple Computer: Throwing out Steve Jobs :: The 11-year period that Apple continued on without Steve Jobs is universally considered to be a major low point for the company.
• Steve Case and Gerald M. Levin: AOL / Time Warner Merger :: In 2009, shortly after appointing a new CEO, Tim Armstrong, AOL announced it would spin off Time Warner into a separate public company, ending a fruitless eight year relationship.
  

To that list I would add Bob Allen, AT&T: NCR Acquisition. After many years and nine billion dollars of loss AT&T spun NCR off to obscurity. Any others that you might add to the list?