Companies do a lot of silly things. Let's go over a few things that could make them Darwin Award candidates.
1. You may already be a winner, loser
Yahoo!
The process didn't go smoothly. The Yahoo! Mail blog soon filled up with people who had problems with the buggy signup process. Poor Yahoo! can't seem to catch a break these days. Then again, the way executives keep leaving the company, maybe it should start offering its corporate "@yahoo-inc.com" domain to free email users, too.
2. If it's not broken, don't flix it
Netflix
"Please know that the motivation is solely driven by keeping our service as simple and as easy to use as possible," the company artfully states. "Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the website."
So Netflix is saying that it's killing the feature because its members are stupid? I'm not taunting -- I'm a subscriber myself.
3. An Apple a day
Amazon.com
Why Coldplay, though? The band is already heavily associated with Amazon's rival iTunes Music Store. Does anyone remember the artist behind the billionth song downloaded on iTunes two years ago? Yep. It was Coldplay. What did Coldplay frontman and Gwyneth Paltrow name their daughter? Uh-huh. It was "Apple."
4. Be my little eBay
eBay
The problem is that this isn't eBay's shining moment. The company upset many of its sellers with changes to its feedback ratings, PayPal requirements, and fee shifts. So why is anyone surprised that at least one blogger is pointing out that the number of attendees -- and exhibitors -- is down this year? I'm all for having eBay host an annual powwow, but it has wounds to heal first.
5. I guess that's why they call it a downgrade
Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Wienkes dramatically lowered his price targets on satellite-radio couple Sirius
As bad as each company's financials appear at the moment, the deal is apparently now just weeks away from getting the regulatory nod from the FCC. The new price targets would mean that the combined Sirius-XM would be worth less than either Sirius or XM as a standalone company before the deal was even announced. That's unreal.
Want to hear something dumb?