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Netflix

2011 – Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made one of the biggest blunders of 2011 when he announced not only was the DVD section of Netflix getting a new name, but also that section was up for sale. Qwikster brought a lot of attention rapidly for two reasons – 1. It was close to Amway’s spin-off Quixster, and 2. Qwikster used to be the twitter handle of a pot-smoking Elmo character. Since then, Hastings apologized and the company reeled back the statement. However, it was not before they lost 2/3 of their stock and over 800,000 subscribers. Currently, their stock is at $57 a share (from $295 back in July 2011).

ATT Logo

1995 – The National Cash Register Company (NCR) Started in 1884 with Point of Sales registers. The company deals in all types of POS, but had financial problems. In 1991, AT&T purchased NCR for $7.4 billion. NCR has been the only AT&T acquisition that retained their original name. on Sept. 20 1995 AT&T would spin NCR back into it’s own company due to the antitrust issues put forward

This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for September 17

• NT3.51 SP5 released
• Ruby 1.6.5 released
• Apple recalls power supplies

Tagged as: acquisition, amp, amway, antitrust issues, apple, blunders, cash register company, ceo, company deals, day in tech history, Google, national cash register, national cash register company, ncr, netflix, nt3, Podcast, pot, Reed Hastings, ruby, september 17, sp5, stock, subscribers, technology history

Article by Jeffrey Powers @geekazine

Jeffrey has written 380 awesome articles for us at Day in Tech History