5 innovative tech companies that got it wrong in the end

Ah, General Magic. I was there just before the final death throes, long after all the names had left. We were down to one significant customer, General Motors OnStar, selling minutes to people who wanted to get their baseball scores and stock quotes on their car phones. And trying to give away Portico, although I think it was called something else by then.

Death spirals are no fun. A couple of months after I got there, my boss the VP of engineering, the chief architect, the lead programmer, and several others left. We got a new president. The head of operations took over engineering. I took the hint an bailed out. A year later I got the bankruptcy notice in the mail.

I worked at Nortel between 2000 and 2004. It was a great company. Their equipment for Frame Relay / ATM networks - called Passport - was really nice. It's amazing that we still can find their devices for X.25 networks (DPN) and a lot os companies still use it. They have been working for decades now. Eventually, all those beige phones of the Meridian PBX we could find in Hotels and Companies will disappear...