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These are the top five tech turkeys of this year.
I know it's a little early, there's still time for a company to completely alter this list, but that's a risk we're willing to take.
Let's talk turkey.
Talking turkey!
Coming in at number five is the end of the whole WAYMO/UBER feud.
The tech world has seen some crazy battles over the years.
Apple suing Microsoft, Apple suing Samsung, the US Department of Justice suing Microsoft.
Then there was WAYMO suing UBER over theft of trade secrets in February, this seemed like there would be a serious battle that could go on forever.
And it went on for days, four days, as in one more day than three days.
The two companies decided to settle.
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[UNKNOWN] ended up owning 0.34% of Uber's equity.
That amount could be worth around $245 million.
[UNKNOWN] was seeking $1.8 billion in damages so this was like a firecracker that ended up being a dud.
If the two companies were just going to settle There was little reason to go and waste a court's time at all.
At number four, is airpower.
I've seen wireless power devices been pushed for years.
The wireless cheese standard was a huge step forward.
I will say, I was really surprised when Apple jumped onto the cheese standard bandwagon.
Then it announced Airpower.
A device that could power multiple products at one time, Airpower, was also supposed to let devices talk to each other, regarding power consumption.
This was back in September, 2017.
Then a year went by.
In that time, Apple took a lot of references to Airpower off its site.
But there's a tiny shred of hope.
Airpower was mentioned in the iPhone 10s manual [INAUDIBLE] Number 3 is Elon Musk and his use of Twitter.
I don't even know where to start with this one.
On one hand, we've got this guy who's regularly compared to the fictional Tony Stark.
On the other hand, we've got these tweets.
This tweet by Musk got Tesla in hot water with the DOJ because Musk claimed that in 2017 Tesla will produce 5000 Model 3s per week by December 2017.
The company didn't hit that mark until June of this year.
This tweet got Musk in even more trouble, he got slapped with a $20 million fine, tesla, the company was hit with its own $20 million fine [UNKNOWN] also had to stepped down as Chairman of Tesla's board [UNKNOWN] main CEO.
Why?
Because the SEC says the tweet was misleading which cause Tesla stock price to jump over 6%.
And let's not even talk about the whole submarine thing [UNKNOWN] And number 2 is Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, okay, let's recap this mess.
Data from as many as 87 million people Was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm.
The information collected by Cambridge Analytica may have been misused for political ads during the 2016 US presidential election.
The company also had a connection to the Trump presidential campaign.
Facebook did take actions to correct things by purging pages linked to a Russian troll farm.
The company also tried to make changes to avoid election shenanigans before the US mid-term elections this year.
Then for some reason, the company introduced a new video chatting gadget by the name of Portal.
That's right, Facebook is trying to sell camera equipped devices for your home after all of this Good luck with that.
Before we get to number one, let's discuss an honorable mention, Google.
A lot went wrong for the company this year, but let's keep it light.
The Pixel 3 was one of the worst kept secrets in a long time.
It was leaked so much that even Google made fun of that fact When it formally introduced the pixel.
And the biggest tech turkey of 2018 was US net neutrality getting [UNKNOWN].
Back in 2015 the FCC made net neutrality a formal thing in the United States.
The concept of net neutrality is basically all bits are treated the same.
You should receive data from any service without an Internet service provider interfering.
Then the US got a new FCC commissioner the comically large coffee mug.
Ajit Pai led the commission in killing the previous rules and also stripped the agency of its authority to regulate the Internet.
Now nothing horrible has happened yet.
We don't have fast lanes for specific services.
Yet, but this is like deciding to keep your front door unlocked.
Sure, nothing could happen for a while, but there's a big opportunity for something to go wrong.
Several states are trying to build workaround methods to build net neutrality, but that can cause issues with the federal government.
We'd like to formally apologize to actual turkeys.
There's nothing inherently wrong with being a turkey.
To you, I say Gobble gobble gobble.
I'm Iyaz Akhtar and I'll see you online.
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