To clarify, when I said radio, I mean it as the broadcast medium we know today, not just the point to point wireless analog transmission. It's only obvious to you the benefit of radio as a broadcast medium, because you live in the future.
"By 1916, along with Armstrong and de Forest, [David Sarnoff] was using his newfound fame to push the idea of commercial radio, something he called the "wireless music box," although this idea was before its time. Even as late as 1920, one potential investor wrote him to say, "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
Even the Marconi Company, his employer, rejected the idea of radio as anything but a communications medium. So he went to work for the Radio Corporation of America [RCA] in 1920.
-- Radio Pioneers enter story of the wire on David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio." http://www.radioworld.com/article/radio-pioneers-enter-story...
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
-- Wikiquotes -- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Incorrect_predictions#Televisio...
As for the PC, I don't have a quote. But I remember IBM was the way "serious people" had their computational needs met, and it was not PCs.
I never made claims that Google invented the business of bidding for search terms. It is true that search was considered non-monetizable, or if you like, less monetizable. Either way, it wasn't considered fertile ground for making money, but there were people trying anyway--which is my point:
Smart people try things that don't make money, aren't cool, seem weird, etc, and while not all of them will be mainstream in the future, there's a good chance that a some of them will be.
"By 1916, along with Armstrong and de Forest, [David Sarnoff] was using his newfound fame to push the idea of commercial radio, something he called the "wireless music box," although this idea was before its time. Even as late as 1920, one potential investor wrote him to say, "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" Even the Marconi Company, his employer, rejected the idea of radio as anything but a communications medium. So he went to work for the Radio Corporation of America [RCA] in 1920. -- Radio Pioneers enter story of the wire on David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio." http://www.radioworld.com/article/radio-pioneers-enter-story...
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." -- Wikiquotes -- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Incorrect_predictions#Televisio...
As for the PC, I don't have a quote. But I remember IBM was the way "serious people" had their computational needs met, and it was not PCs.
I never made claims that Google invented the business of bidding for search terms. It is true that search was considered non-monetizable, or if you like, less monetizable. Either way, it wasn't considered fertile ground for making money, but there were people trying anyway--which is my point:
Smart people try things that don't make money, aren't cool, seem weird, etc, and while not all of them will be mainstream in the future, there's a good chance that a some of them will be.