Even Facebook's less successful projects — Snapchat-like Slingshot and other now-defunct products from its Creative Labs unit — provided lessons in how users interact and what kind of services appeal and don't appeal.
A LEGAL case concerning the precise status of a loan by a British bank to a now insolvent paint firm might sound as interesting as, well, watching the defunct debtor's products dry.
When the American version began, it had a warmer sensibility, but it still worked with Gervais's themes, particularly the notion that life at Dunder-Mifflin was a small tragedy, a place of learned helplessness, where the employees killed time selling a product that was already defunct.
Here are seven companies (the last defunct) and partial descriptions of their product lines.
Pity anyone who spent $1,500 on a pair of Google Glasses last January; not for spending that much on a product that became pretty much defunct just days later, but for being an obnoxious show-off or unbearable oaf with far more money than sense.
Before joining the location team, Mayer also led the product management and design teams behind Google's web and image search, as well as books, products, toolbar and the now-defunct iGoogle site.
When Patil joined Greylock from now defunct Color Labs (where he was Chief Product Officer), the role of the data scientist was on the brink of becoming the hot new role to fill in Silicon Valley.
One $300m package, named Anderson, was created in March 2007 from mortgages written by a defunct sub-prime specialist, New Century, and the financial product was downgraded from a triple-A rating to junk within seven months.
Medium has a new head of product, while the startup behind the defunct texting app Talkshow appears to be done for good.
