5 Tech Products That Failed in the 2010s

In the field of technological innovation, not all products succeed in attracting public attention or meeting market expectations. The 2010s were marked by impressive achievements and resounding successes, but also notable failures that, despite their initial potential, failed to gain a foothold even among industry giants like Google and Microsoft. In this article we bring together five tech products that failed in the 2010sthose who promised to revolutionize their fields but were eventually forgotten.

The coolest cooler

The Coolest Cooler promised to be the most advanced refrigerator on the market, equipped with a blender, Bluetooth speakers and USB chargers. Despite a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014, Coolest faced production and distribution issues, leading to delays and dissatisfaction among backers who paid $200 for the product at the time. Ultimately, the project did not live up to expectations, and many backers never received their products. Of the more than 62,600 backers, approximately 20,000 remained willing to receive their innovative refrigerator.

Gafas Google

Google’s smart glasses, known as Google Glass, have become one of the most anticipated launches of the decade, promising a revolutionary augmented reality experience. It was a device that projected an optical head-up display that could be used with or without glasses, allowing all the data you’d normally see on a phone to float before your eyes. After selling a prototype for $1,500 in 2013, Glass was released to the public the following year. However, technical limitations, high price, short battery life, and privacy concerns doomed these flashy, high-tech glasses, and by 2015, the first generation of Glass was no longer sold.

Google+

The rivalry between Google and Facebook intensified with the launch of Google Buzz in 2010, a social networking platform aimed at Android and iOS users. However, in October 2011, Google stopped supporting Buzz to focus on Google+. Despite efforts to integrate this new social network into popular services such as Blogger, Gmail and YouTube, Google+ has failed to attract a significant audience. The failure was compounded when it was discovered that a bug in the platform had exposed 500,000 profiles in early 2018. Subsequently, another error accelerated the closure of the service, moving the date from August 2019 to April of the same year.

Came

Vine became an instant hit when it was founded in June 2012. Four months later, Twitter acquired the platform and officially launched it in January 2013. Vine has limited video posting times to just 6 seconds, encouraging creators to be extremely creative. However, Twitter was unable to find a profitable model for the service and closed it in 2016. In an attempt to revive Vine co-founder Dom Hoffman launched Byte in 2020, but faced stiff competition from short-form video titans like TikTok and Instagram. making it difficult to highlight again.

Windows 8 and its variants

Throughout the 2010s, Microsoft has experienced several ups and downs in its operating systems journey. After the success of Windows 7, the launch of Windows 8 in 2012 was disastrous. Radical changes such as tiles and mobile orientation have caused outrage among users. With Windows 8.1, Microsoft pulled back many of these aspects to regain the familiarity of Windows 7. Then the release of Windows 10 as a free upgrade was enthusiastically received by both critics and fans of Windows 8, marking a successful return to the interface. functionality that is most valued by users.

Windows RT represented another setback for Microsoft, as it was a limited version of Windows 8 designed for mobile devices with low-power chips. This solution, limited to running only apps from the Windows Store, was not well received by traditional PC users. Fortunately, with the reorientation of the Surface line toward the high-end, Microsoft has ditched the low-end RT operating system to better meet market expectations.

Another notable setback was Microsoft’s entry into the mobile operating system market with Windows Phone 7, Phone 8 and Windows 10 Mobile. Despite repeated attempts, it has never been able to gain enough public interest to compete with the market leaders. At the end of 2018, Microsoft finally stopped developing mobile applications, marking the final end of the era of experimentation.