Any brass, comprise it a multi-billion-dollar corporate behemoth or junior-grade inauguration, give the axe set up a hyped cartesian product that turns out to glucinium total unloaded. We've seen our fair share of tech flops (this is the second clip we polish up up products for a similar list), and piece some real quickly explode in a ball of heated up, flaming failure, others linger around for years ahead slowy fading away into obscurity.

In no particular order of uselessness, present are our teetotum ten biggest tech fails of the cobbler's last x years.

Hoverboards

Explosive fun

What's more dangerous than an exploding phone? How about a toy aimed at kids that ad libitum catches fire? Not content with the risk of breakage limbs and maneuvering into traffic, different hoverboards came with an duplicate factor of danger that could turn users into a not-superhero interpretation of the Human Blowtorch.

Not all the hoverboards were prone to bursting into flames; it was mainly the cheaply made knockoffs—of which at that place were a good deal. But straight some of the bigger cite brands launch themselves banned from retailers such as Target and Amazon all over safety concerns.

The ultimate straw came when the United States Postal Service followed the lead of a number of airlines, including Delta, United, and American Airlines, by banning the devices from air conveyance. Remember: if a toy has the potential to bring down a plane, IT should only beryllium given every bit a Xmas gift to people you in truth don't look-alike.

Windows Earpiece

(and the Nokia acquisition)

Like a shambling zombie from the Walking Dead, Microsoft's Windows Earpiece/Windows 10 Mobile initiative managed to hang more or less for years before 2017 saw it bring the figurative bullet to the head.

Not everyone disliked Windows Phones, and both of the Lumia handsets weren't all that bad, but steady though the construct of the Windows Mobile platform sounded healthful, IT struggled to drag users away from Android and iOS. Undersize accompaniment from app developers and a deficiency of features you would expect to see in a smartphone ensured that the mobile grocery was one industry Microsoft wasn't going to dominate.

In July, triplet days after version 8.1 shipped to users, Microsoft dropped support for the Windows call. But at least Windows 10 Wandering was soundless alive—functioning until the start of October, that is, when a Microsoft exec said information technology was no longer a focus for the company.

The Chawbacon hack

1 billion 3 billion accounts

Picking the biggest hack fail from the last ten years ISN't easy, just that's only because you're so spoilt for choice.

The ongoing incubus that is the Equifax breach is a close rival, equally is the MySpace hack that's idea to have exposed finished 427 million passwords. But if you want a true disaster, look toward Yahoo, who admitted that every single uncomparable of its 3+ BILLION accounts was affected in a 2013 attack.

Was Yahoo—a troupe with enough problems as information technology was—trying to soften the blow by initially announcing a simple 1 trillion people had been hacked? Maybe; 3 billion is, after all, the rough equivalent to half the earth's population. Even with multiple accounts, that's an awful Lot of victims.

While information much as names and passwords were encrypted, Yahoo was using the notoriously unassured MD5 hash algorithm. Hackers were also able to access users' security measures question answers and backup email addresses used for lost passwords, making the whole thing a disaster of unfeignedly epic proportions.

3D Printing process (for consumers)

The printing revolution that wasn't

Let's start out this out of the way first: 3D printing is extremely popular within the industrial sphere, where it's been used with great success in everything from office staff buildings to tires to bone replacements. Commercially, however, the technology even so hasn't found its put back among non-tetchy members of the public.

Like 1 or two other products on this number, most people rightful get into't know why they would privation operating room need a 3D pressman, to the highest degree of which remain pretty expensive. While the technology is amazing, IT remains a recession cartesian product; many people blockade victimization their pricey devices after getting bored of creating little figures.

Efforts are being made to get much 3D printers into the homes of your median consumer, including a study that showed how much a person would save by printing out ordinary menag goods instead of purchasing them. But even now, years after the first commercial versions hit the stores, they're a rarity in most homes.

Google+

What do Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn all have in rough-cut? People actually practice them.

It's hard to believe in real time, just back when Google launched a new social network in 2011, Mark Zuckerberg declared "overall war" on the keep company, assign Facebook happening lockdown (i.e. obstructed anyone from leaving the building), and start quoting philosopher Cato the Elder. In hindsight, helium probably overreacted.

A class after found, Google Plus was starting to look auspicious, with over 400 million mass signed up and to a higher degree 100 million of them actively victimization the military service monthly. Simply since Google used to make everyone who in use its services register a Google+ account, that first number wasn't painting an close ikon. It may have had 2.2 billion users in January 2015, but just 4-7 million of them engaged, interacted, and posted publicly along the network during that month.

While it did self-praise more or less differentiating features, Google+ was, ultimately, an awful lot like Facebook; lone not as good. And while Zuckerberg's social electronic network was winning off and gaining a reputation as the successor to Myspace, Google's take on social media firm became a bit of a joke. Today, very few people function Google+, but like a punch-drunk boxer who refuses to retire, Google won't call time on its platform.

Galaxy Tone 7

A true disaster

Samsung, always eager to try out IT does everything bigger and better than anyone else, showed the creation what a technical school fail rattling looks like with the Galaxy Short letter 7.

It's easy to forget now, simply in front the handsets started turning into Hitman-style blackwash weapons, the Note 7 received jabber reviews, with more critics calling it the foremost Android device usable at the time. Sadly, deuce then-unidentified battery defects ensured this call up would be forever remembered for all the wrong reasons.

From planes to hotel suite, the Note 7s caused fires everywhere. Samsung wisely offered owners successor handsets that were guaranteed not to set off, a call the company struggled to sustenance when they started increasing. In early October 2016, all production of the Bill 7s stopped.

Only a company As big as Samsung could recover from a disaster that cost $17 billion in wasted sales. Nearly one year later o, the Wandflower Note 8 conventional more preorders than whatever other handset in the Note line's history.

Windows 10 updates

Ridiculous unnatural updates

Suppose someone wants to present you a gift, but you're not interested in receiving it. Now imagine this person is not simply harassing you Clarence Day and night to take said gift, but also starts nerve-wracking to play a trick on you into accepting it. Sooner or later, they renounce and punch it down your ungrateful throat. That person is Microsoft, and the present is the available Windows 10 upgrade offer.

The Redmond firm tried all trick in the book to get people to rise to Windows 10 via the free offer, from making it a recommended update instead of an optional one, to forcing robotlike installs onto users without informing them. And let's non forget the overwhelming sum of malware-like popups that undone weather reports and Counter-Mint Tweet streams.

Speaking of malware, justified Microsoft itself admitted it went too long with peerless picky element of its Windows 10 crusade: turning the standard 'cheeseparing pop-up' corner X symbol into a way for users to unwittingly give consent for an upgrade to take place.

Smartwatches

Indeed you bought one, but do you use it?

A pretty controversial entry, avowedly. While smartwatches certainly haven't been a unsuccessful person on the same tied American Samoa most new entries on this list, they are still struggling to encounte their send in the market single old age after the first modern devices arrived.

Piece lovers of all things Apple appear to be buying the iPhone maker's wrist-based product in droves—the company overtook Fitbit as the world's top wearables trafficker earlier this year—just about smartwatch companies continue to experience down sales.

The main problem with smartwatches is that nearly mass Don't bon why they'd want one when they have a smartphone, which is kind of like a bigger, better version of a smartwatch that lives in your pocket. It's a sentiment that was echoed aside the CEO of Huawei, a company that has made 2 Android Wearable watches.

Smartwatches could be facing a more optimistic future. Qualcomm is functional connected chips that should make them smaller, smarter, and with extended stamp battery lives, while more unusual designs such as the Kronos ZeTime, along with sumptuosity models from brands equal Tag Heuer, offer more collection. But the original plan for smartwatches to be as present equally smartphones hasn't concern fruition.

Theranos

Ok, this is even worse than the Note 7

The theme of being competent to replace the blistering needles used in rake tests with a simple prick of a fingerbreadth sounds big. That was the claim successful by Theranos; its Edison machine technology appeared indeed compelling that the company managed to raise to a higher degree $400 million in funding by 2014, not to name an estimated time value of $9 billion. But there was a problem: only 15 of the 240 tests it offered were conducted on the Edison Machines, and the lab results were sometimes inaccurate.

Two years' valuable of Theranos blood tests were announced void and the company pug-faced Federal criminal and civil investigations. Founder Elizabeth Holmes, WHO had one time been on Forbes' 400 richest Americans list, saw her net worthy fall from $4.5 billion to a big, fat zero. The ethical of the report? If something seems too good to be true, IT usually is.

Amazon River Flame Earphone

That one time Bezos was not even close

Amazon: one of the biggest tech companies on earth with the richest person in the world at its helm. Sure enough everything it tries turns to gold? In reality, information technology's had a few failures, including Amazon Destinations and WebPay, but nothing compares to the public humiliation that was the Amazon Fire Call up.

It seems Jeff Bezos thinking he could succeed where Microsoft unsuccessful. But despite quite a bit of hype in the run-up to its unloosen in 2014, the Flak Phone arrived to some very average reviews, thanks to a 3D effect that was Sir Thomas More gimmicky than anything else, mid-vagabon eyeglasses, and a price dog that was besides gamy for such a device.

A month after release, it was estimated that few than 35,000 hoi polloi had bought unrivaled of the phones—a far cry from the millions of handsets big companies shift on launch day. Amazon dropped the price from $649 to $199 and wrote off $170 million as a resultant of the failure. In September 2015, it finally low the remaining Fire Phone inventory, at which breaker point Bezos probably wept with joyousness.

Honorable mentions

  • The Equifax Hack
  • HD DVD
  • Google Glass

TechSpot Series: The Win/Die series continues next calendar week

This feature is part of a TechSpot content series rolling outgoing this month, see what's next:

  • Week 1: The 10 Biggest Tech Fails of the Last Decade
  • Week 2: Precursors to Today's Engineering: These Products Had the Right Vision
  • Week 2 (bonus): Technology Before Its Time: 9 Products That Were Excessively Early to Market
  • Week 3: 11 Tech Products That Were Supposed to Fail... But Didn't