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Verizon Fails Again, Shutters Attempted Zoom Alternative BlueJeans After Paying $400 Million For It (www.techdirt.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Verizon Fails Again, Shutters Attempted Zoom Alternative BlueJeans After Paying $400 Million For It::Pretty much every time Verizon wanders outside of its core competencies (operating telecom networks, lobbying to hamstring competition, undermining the most basic of regulatory oversight), the telco amusingly falls flat on its face. It's quite honestly starting to get a little weird. Whether it’s the company’s Go90 video streaming platform, its video joint venture with RedBox, its news website Sugarstring (which…

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[-] Fixbeat@lemmy.ml 35 points 1 year ago

BlueJeans?...Have we just run out of sensible names for stuff?

[-] rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was a stupid name and a terrible service. Unsurprised to learn that Verizon was sitting on it just enshittifying it and waiting for it to make money without doing a damn thing with it. I hate this timeline.

[-] orphiebaby@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

Imagine being able to just waste $400 mil. While 40% of the people in the same, richest country on Earth are living paycheck to paycheck, trying not to become homeless.

[+] just_change_it@lemmy.world -16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Verizon has 117,100 employees. They spent $3415 per person. This doesn't include all the contractors and consultants they have manning their phone lines overseas for a few bucks a day.

Their market cap is 140.25 billion dollars. 0.4 billion is a trivial amount of money compared to all the money already invested in them. Purchasing a company for less than 1% of your valuation to try and make more money seems like an incredibly safe experiment.

One person thinks about big numbers as "why can't they just give it away so I can have things better." There's four billion people out there who have trouble putting food on the table and could never even think about seeing a quality of life that even the homeless have in the US. Dividing that 400 million up wouldn't do much of anything for them.

Even if you take 40% of americans (132,760,000) and hand out 400 million dollars that's only $3 per person.

[-] orphiebaby@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Who the fuckity shit said my argument was about dividing $400 million among four billion people?

[-] just_change_it@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

I forget people have trouble following comments that are longer than a couple of sentences :(

[-] oKtosiTe@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, their point is valid. You just did a bunch of mathematics while completely ignoring the larger issue of corporations and rich executives wasting money on frivolous endeavors.

Not only that, you literally suggested that dividing the BlueJeans money among the poor of the world would do them little benefit–as if Verizon is the only company perpetrating corporate greed–which they never suggested.

Using your own numbers, $3415 dollars would probably make a huge difference in most Verizon employees' lives, but instead they spent that money on BlueJeans, a product that any reasonable person could have told you was doomed to fail.

Hope this comment wasn't too long for you.

[-] orphiebaby@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks. I don't always have the mental energy to explain or counter every statement. Love that biting last sentence. <3

[-] maporita@unilem.org 14 points 1 year ago

You would think that Verizon had learned something from their purchase of AOL (2015) and Yahoo (2017) and subsequent 5B write-down but apparently not.

[-] TurboDiesel@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

My tinfoil hat opinion is it's just strategic incompetence designed to dodge taxes somehow. Then again I'm a suspicious and cynical person. Could very well just be idiots.

[-] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The down side to this, of course, is that now you can't ask someone to BJ you when you want to do a video call.

[-] kill_dash_nine@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

We used BlueJeans at the startup I worked for starting in 2014. At some point a few years in, we switched to Zoom. I distinctly remember BlueJeans absolutely tearing through my laptop’s battery and the fan going into full hover mode. I was so glad to be rid of that thing.

[-] 3TH4Li4@feddit.ch 2 points 1 year ago

If any of you want a true Zoom alternative then try Jitsi

[-] Pat12@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

wild i remember using this for job interviews a few years ago

[-] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Those are rookie losses. They need to step up their game if they want to be as bad at investing as Musk or Trump.

this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023

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