25 Companies That Sailed Off the Road Because Somebody Was Asleep at the Wheel
Think you’ve got regrets? A company called Excite could’ve purchased Google for less than $1 million!
![25 Companies That Sailed Off the Road Because Somebody Was Asleep at the Wheel](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/8/6/971886_320x180.jpg)
Have you ever lost $14.6 billion in a single day? We’ve had some quarters fall between the couch cushions before, but we luckily found them about a year later when we finally cleaned the couch. But hey, because of inflation, they lost some of their value. So we (and these other bonehead companies) can totally relate.
![CRACKED UB PRE THE NATI L P PRESS C В $8 BILLION BECAUSE OF A MERGER Ted Turner saw a huge financial loss of around $8 billion after America Online and Time Warner merged in 2001. Не had massive holdings of the new company's stock, and its price absolutely plummeted.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/7/970027.jpg)
![CRACKED OVER $5 BILLION IN 2 MONTHS In 1980, Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brothers Herbert and Lamar tried to control the global silver market. This gamble failed, and it caused the value of their investments to crash from $7 billion in January to $1.7 billion in March.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/8/970028.jpg)
![CRACKED Tesla's self-driving cars plow through child-shaped objects. The Dawn Project ran multiple tests where a car in full self-driving mode mowed right over some child dummies. Tesla has since sent multiple cease-and-desist letters, while Tesla fanboys have called for using actual children to prove that the feature works. - - - - Kings www](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/6/970026.jpg)
![CRACKED Google Glass was an expensive invasion of privacy. In 2012, Google hyped us up with a flashy promo video of skydivers streaming a jump. But the actual use cases of tech nerds discretely recording videos were a lot more... ogley. The creep factor, and the $1,500 price tag, caused Google to shelve it in 2015.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/5/970025.jpg)
![CRACKED Segways and Hoverboards were portable death traps. On top of bursting into flames, hoverboards landed over 26,000 kids in the ER between 2015 and 2016. Segway has doled out its fair share of injuries, and ironically, the company's owner, Jim Heseldon, accidentally rode one off of a cliff and died. OS TAILOR adidas](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/4/970024.jpg)
![CRACKED Humans trained AI to be racist. In 2016, Microsoft told users that the more they tweet to Tay, the more she'd learn. Within 24 hours, she was tweeting racial slurs, Hitler quotes, incestuous sexual acts, and was immediately canceled. TWEETS FOLL 96.1K 48 Tweets Tw TayTweets](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/3/970023.jpg)
![CRACKED Cybertruck's unbreakable windows. After boasting about the Cybertruck's unbreakable armored glass windows, Chief designer Franz von Holzhausen smashed one. Then two. Elon Musk initially suggested shooting the truck, but that (like the faulty window) was scrapped.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/2/970022.jpg)
![CRACKED Amazon's life-threatening home security. Homeowners can check in on their homes from anywhere, and with Amazon Ring, so can everyone else! Hackers have spied on people, spoken racial slurs through the mic, and even told an old lady Tonight you die. Dozens of terrified users sued Amazon.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/1/970021.jpg)
![CRACKED TUTE MILK $33 BILLION IN 18 MONTHS Eike Batista, a Brazilian oil tycoon, went from an estimated wealth of $34 billion to less than $1 billion in just 18 months. Until Elon came along, that made him a contender for the person who has lost the most money in the history of the world.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/2/0/970020.jpg)
![CRACKED $14.6 BILLION IN A DAY In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried, the head of FTX, lost a lot of money - about $14.6 billion - in a single day, after he made a deal with Binance to get some help.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/9/970019.jpg)
![CRACKED ELON MUSK Elon Musk's net worth has dropped $9 billion since buying Twitter, and he is now facing a number of financial challenges in owning the company.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/8/970018.jpg)
![CRACKED CITIBANK Citibank made a mistake and accidentally sent $900 million to the wrong people, and the lenders refused to return the money. The lenders were taking advantage of the situation due to a longer running saga between them and Revlon, the company that borrowed the money.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/6/970016.jpg)
![CRACKED SAMSUNG Samsung Securities Co CEO Koo Sung-hoon resigned after the company was punished by South Korea's financial regulator for an employee's error that sparked a $105 billion ghost stock blunder. The company was handed a six month partial suspension of its operations and its chief was suspended for three months.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/7/970017.jpg)
![CRACKED Google eXcite EXCITE In 1999, Google offered to sell to Excite for under $1 million, but Excite rejected the offer.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/5/970015.jpg)
![CRACKED OFFER NECK СОНТН AX JIL HER #News Corporation body NEWS CORP. News Corp. sold Myspace for $35 million, a huge loss compared to the $580 million they paid for it in 2005.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/4/970014.jpg)
![CRACKED HAPPLE APPLE NL NATURAL UNISTRAWBERRY EACH TEA onapp Mine MON TEA adidas instruction Snapple i NATURAL - NET NATURAL MANGO MADNESS napp ( Snapple & e NATURAL C apple Lee's need ALEXA US Master LAKER E - RED names : - aanes BEE MG I BLE QUAKER Quaker Oats Co. agreed to sell Snapple Beverage Corp. to Triarc Cos. for $300 million, only 27 months after Quaker spent $1.7 billion to buy the maker of trendy drinks, resulting in a loss of $1.4 billion for Quaker.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/2/970012.jpg)
![CRACKED NOKIA 3 def g 1 2 abc 4 b ghi mno 5 jkl 7 pqrs wx 8 tuv * ب 0 MICROSOFT Microsoft has wasted at least $8 billion on its failed Nokia experiment, and CEO Satya Nadella's vision for the company has shifted away from a devices and services focus, resulting in the end of Microsoft's mobile subsidiary.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/3/970013.jpg)
![CRACKED Weinerville -Netscape 5 x File Edit View Go Communicator Help My N Back Forward Reload Home Search Netscape Print Security Stop Bookmarks Location: http://www.geocities. s.com/Heartland/Meadows/7322/ Welcome to Wienerville Where dachshunds will walk all over your heart YAHOO! Yahoo purchased Geocities in 1999 for over $4 billion, but the acquisition was ultimately unsuccessful and the site was shut down in 2009.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/1/970011.jpg)
![CRACKED Facebook's 24/7 spy machine. After a 50 million user data breach, Facebook released Portal, a video-calling device with a camera and mic that were always on. Labeled the worst tech device of the year, people distrusted Facebook's camera/microphone combo in their home, and it flopped.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/0/8/970008.jpg)
![CRACKED Quibi failed... because of Covid? They spent 1.8 billion dollars to create big budget, ten-minute episodes with Hollywood stars. After it flopped, founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus. Sure Jeff, no one consumed video during the pandemic.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/1/0/970010.jpg)
![CRACKED Elizabeth Holmes' impossible vampire machine. A medical tech scam for the ages, Elizabeth Holmes advertised a revolution in retrieving blood samples. Theranos could supposedly do 240 tests on a tiny sample... but it was all a lie (that now has her facing up to 20 years in prison).](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/0/7/970007.jpg)
![CRACKED Google's steampunk-ass internet balloons. Going literally above and beyond cell towers, Alphabet (Google's parent company) tried to give affordable internet to planet Earth with internet-emitting balloons. Many countries denied them for airspace security reasons. They lost $1 billion and popped them all.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/0/9/970009.jpg)
![CRACKED Incendiary baby monitors. Lorex's baby monitor had motion tracking, night vision, and an ability to snap pics. All that tech cramming caused 488 reports of burn-temperature overheating, and cases of the battery pack expanding enough for the outer casing to shoot right off.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/0/6/970006.jpg)
![CRACKED The solar panel that never was. Solyndra wanted to provide innovative circular solar panels in 2009. They got over $1 billion between investments and federal loans, but the company's business plan was so transparent, it straight-up did not exist.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/0/5/970005.jpg)
![CRACKED Cybersecurity for identity thieves. This consumer reporting agency left 147 million Americans' SSN's, birth dates, addresses, and driver's license numbers exposed. Over 209,000 peoples' credit cards were accessed, and Equifax is currently paying $425 million to victims. EQUIFAX](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/0/0/4/970004.jpg)