Dare Obasanjo

Verizon is shutting down the Zoom competitor it purchased for $400 million in 2020. This isn’t even the most ignominious failed tech purchase by Verizon that’s their Yahoo acquisition.

Cellular carriers are great proofs of the saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Verizon and AT&T keep wanting to be tech & content players but keep botching acquisitions. They should embrace being sellers of dumb pipes who grow their business by adding random fees to phone bills https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23825112/verizon-bluejeans-shutting-down-sunset

Verizon is shutting down BlueJeans, which it bought for $400 million

Verizon is shutting down BlueJeans, its Zoom competitor it acquired for a lot of money in the early days of the covid pandemic. Users on the company’s free tier will be able to use it until August 31st.

The Verge
Aug 8, 2023 at 11:41pmWeb
Show threadTom Bellin Aug 8, 2023

@carnage4life Oof. I think the core problem is that these companies (Zoom) never came close to a "killer product."

Just video chat and screen sharing, which have been ubiquitous for decades and are included free in the offerings of Google and MS that every company already subscribes to.

How do you innovate in a space like that?

Show threadPaul ChernoffAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life @briankrebs They should have put their money into expanding FiOS coverage.
Show threadBoot Scootin' BoogerAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life Ah, BlueJeans. The "is Pepsi okay?" of video conferencing.
Show threadUptime: ∞Aug 9, 2023
@HailHodor @carnage4life got an actual chuckle out of me
Show threadamroAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life @kyleve Twitter used this when I started working there years ago. Eventually switched to Meet
Show threadCrispy Gnome ChomskyAug 9, 2023

@carnage4life s/business/breakfast/ ?

Microsoft paid $8.5e9 for Skype - about 20x more even if we pretend a 2011 $ == a 2020 $. I speculate that the problem is that these companies accumulate capital because that's what companies are supposed to do, but they really have no idea what to do with it once they get it. The bigger pile they can burn in one deal, the better they like it. The twitter deal seems to be another example. The stupider the deal, the more points earned in a mysterious game.

Show threadKevin HardimanAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life they just can’t shake the (original) AT&T monopoly culture (the current incarnation of AT&T is actually Southwestern Bell Telephone).
Show threadSörenAug 10, 2023
@kevin_hardiman @carnage4life and Verizon was Bell Atlantic
Show threadBob HorowitzAug 9, 2023

@carnage4life I'm okay with cellular carriers making a few bucks retailing phones and cases. They usually have enough stock on hand satisfy people who still use cars and feet to shop.

But holy christ, carrier web pages are a nightmare. Have you ever tried to purchase a plan online? This isn't something they know how to do, not even in the slightest.

Show threadTony DorieAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life I only ever encountered BlueJeans in use at one company out of all of the meetings I’ve been on over the years. Still, it was a better product than google meet…
Show threadJaroslav "Řezza" ŘezníkAug 9, 2023
@tdorie @carnage4life early on it was better than Google Meet but over time it lacked more and more against the competition.
Show threadTony DorieAug 9, 2023
@RezzaBuh @carnage4life I dunno - my memory is a bit hazy but I think BlueJeans back then may actually have been better than Google meet is today.
Show threadJaroslav "Řezza" ŘezníkAug 9, 2023
@tdorie @carnage4life no, it wasn't. We migrated from BlueJeans to Google Meet while using it in parallel and even though in the beginning, I was big fan of BlueJeans and we tried to stay on it for as long as possible, it started to break more and more often. Google Meet was on the other hand very basic meeting tool and over the years I have to say I prefer it over all other videoconferencing tools. The progress Google made is huge.
Show threadTony DorieAug 9, 2023
@RezzaBuh I kid… somewhat… Every time I end up on a Google meet call, something about it annoys me. Video/audio quality, counterintuitive UI, sign in process are all second rate. YMMV but, my experience has been so bad, when I see a Google meet call on an invite, I start to wonder about the viability of the company that employs the person I’m meeting with.
Show threadJaroslav "Řezza" ŘezníkAug 9, 2023
@tdorie we usually ask our vendors to use our Google Meet for meetings, as when the team sees WebEx, or even Teams, they immediately freak out. And yes, even Meet has many UX issues but that's the only one you could see a real progress.
Show threadTony DorieAug 9, 2023
@RezzaBuh Personal taste I suppose. I don’t understand why I need to log into a Google account just to join a meeting. I don’t have a work account and am not keen to use my personal one for work - I think that’s my biggest issue
Show threadJaroslav "Řezza" ŘezníkAug 10, 2023
@tdorie I got it now - Google login is only required for personal non-corporate meetings. When meeting is scheduled with the corporate account, login is not required.
Show threadMorgan DavisAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life It’s not that long ago that similar words were said about the incumbent Bell monopolies.
Show threadAdrian CockcroftAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life Sad to see this. I spent a bunch of time with Bluejeans helping them scale their platform back in 2015 or so. They were focused on B2B corporate deals and replacing webex etc. At that time, consumers didn’t have enough bandwidth for video calls, the growth in bandwidth driven by streaming etc. created the consumer driven opportunity zoom explored well.
Show threadPhil WolffAug 9, 2023
@carnage4life The one who controls the namespace wins. Verizon and AT&T do great when the namespace is phone numbers. IM and every social network did away with that and telcos never caught on.