They were innovative. Or so they seemed. Many of them were ground-breaking on their own markets and areas. They paved the way to new tech paths and innovation. Some were pushed in a corner not even a month after they were released. Others were “broadcasted” for years before they were replaced.

These tech innovations that we share with you today can also be known as failures. Depending on the user’s perspective, many of these creations as useless as they presented themselves at the time, ultimately allowed us to access materials and/or information we needed to move forward with other projects.

Here are some of the innovations we believe had an impact on history’s tech course.

AltaVista

In the early days of the World Wide Web, AltaVista appeared as the pioneer of the search engines. Made by the Digital Equipment Company in 1995, it is the proud owner of the several techniques most of our current search engines were based on. It quickly became a success to its users by allowing access to ten times more web pages than any other search engine.

It was the first search engine to allow searches using natural language. For example, when we wrote a question such as “What is software development?”, the search would focus on the words “software” and “development” instead of focusing on the irrelevant prepositions. It was also the first one to allow searching for images, video, and audio. Before its arrival, users would only get feedback in text.

Sadly, it didn’t take long until Google rose and dethroned AltaVista. What happened? Its fans were its ending. Nobody knew how to work with it, and with time, it ended up being forgotten and rarely used. And, after moving from company to company, it eventually died at the hands of Yahoo in 2013.

On its last breath, AltaVista was already considered a key part of the web. Despite the lack of marketing that was strategically necessary to surpass Google, AltaVista played a key part by increasing users’ expectations regarding web searches. The fall of AltaVista is a cautionary tale to many online businesses. Despite being the first and one of the most advanced in its field it showed fallible without its millions of users.

MySpace

In 2003 came the birth of a social network that would become until today, one of the biggest to ever exist. Born from 3 young minds working at eUniverse, in Digital Marketing, MySpace arrived as an improved version of the social network Friendster.

It quickly grew in users, and in the following year, it already had over a million of them. Its purpose to foster relations between its users and share online ads was successful with the access of over twenty million emails that eUniverse already had in their database. It was the perfect spot to promote ads of the company’s products (marketing).

Music and movie stars “rolled” with it and joined this enormous social network. What better platform to promote their albums and many talents, than a network that grew in thousands daily?

Until 2009 the network grew exponentially and without rivals. However, despite everything looking perfect to its users, two major problems arose: the bureaucracy inside the company and the growth of Facebook. Corporate policies, internal tensions and major scale layoffs were the ruin of the beloved social network. Two years later, the war with Facebook was officially lost and new social networks lurked in the horizon, ready to take its place.

LaserDisc

Did you think the DVD was the first type of disc shaped video? Then let us tell you about LaserDisc…

Launched around 1978, by DiscoVision, the LaserDisc came out with the purpose of surpassing VHS cassettes in image and sound quality. Unfortunately, despite their modern appearance and its ability to present quality video, its launch was a flop.

It was six times bigger than a DVD in size and its appearance resembled a vinyl, with a much smaller capacity, more fragile and easier to damage. Due to its weight and width, it was necessary a bigger mechanic effort from the reader to spin it, which made a loud and unpleasant sound.

Each of its sides could only support one hour of video which meant that to finish a movie, it was necessary to stop and flip it around mid-movie. The used players were too expensive and loud. So, the LaserDisc technology never made it close to surpassing the video tapes. It was, however, a tech innovation that allowed the foundation of the future (now present) CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays.