SGI: From riches to rags

Walk around the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., and you can't help but wonder how the old hands at Silicon Graphics must feel.

The hottest company in techdom operates out of what used to be the main campus for SGI, itself once ranked among the hottest companies in techdom.

Jim Clark, who most folks from the Internet generation associate with Netscape, earlier made his first gazillion dollars by being a co-founder of SGI. A lot of other people made a mint too by investing in the company. At its zenith, no company could match SGI's prowess. The company made its mark with a series of glitzy graphics workstations, and the world was its oyster. (The dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" were created with SGI machines.)

When you consider just how much of a high-flyer this company used to be, news that the NYSE will delist SGI next Monday becomes all the more surreal. But with its stock trading under $1 for the last six months, SGI ran afoul of New York Stock Exchange requirements for listing.

SGI was brought down by its own mistakes--and there were many--but there could be a larger lesson for the campus's current hotshot tenants. Maybe it's the old Roman caution that all glory is fleeting.