Earlier this week, we reported on the apparent death of Michael Arrington’s dream, the CrunchPad. The CrunchPad was supposed to be a slick tablet, but according to an emotional blog post by Arrington the project had been more or less stolen from him by Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage. Rathakrishnan has announced to hold a press event Monday, telling his side of the story, as well as a brief demonstration of the actual device.
So it seems this soap opera is far from over – in fact, it only just begun. Megan Alpers, of the San Jose-based McGrath/Power Public Relations, told the San Francisco Business Times that Rathakrishnan “just wants to be able to share his side of the story and he’s going to be showing the device very briefly as well”.
All this will take place in a video call, but the device will also be demonstrated in a number of private briefings, all scheduled for coming Monday at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. This will be the first time that the device will actually be shown to the world; so far, the CrunchPad has been nothing more than vapourware.
That didn’t stop this epic fail, though.
Now, let’s take a few steps back here for a moment. This is the internet, right? We can all agree on that, right? I believe that there’s something else we can agree on: the lifeblood of the internet is drama. Without drama, the internet would be nothing more than a glorified library. It’s drama that keeps the internet from losing steam as a tool for everyone, everyday, everywhere.
Drama doesn’t just come out of nowhere. While a lot of drama comes into existence by accident, there’s also a substantial amount that is created intentionally. I don’t know about you, but this whole CrunchPad saga reeks of intentionally created drama, just to stir up the internet, and get the drama flowing from blog to blog, from news site to news site, from tweet to retweet.
I obviously can’t be sure about this, and it would also be an epic gamble by the people behind the CrunchPad, but for some reason I find Arrington’s story wholly unbelievable. I can’t honestly believe that this business venture, which has been in the works for a very long time, would end dramatically only a few days before the final unveiling – I’m sure contracts and business deals are involved you can’t just run away from.
It’s too coincidental. In the age of the internet, creating drama ensures your product gets talked about. Arrington and Fusion Garage are not Apple – they don’t have the de facto attention of the internet. They need to jump up and down in the monkey cage to get our attention, and I have the sneaking suspicion that this whole CrunchPad saga is just that.
I second your notion.
Third it.
I hadn’t even considered that this could be some diabolical marketing ploy. Now that you point it out, it sounds completely believable.
Well, if that is the case it is not working…. all that stunt hasn’t disoriented me enough to figure out that for $100 less, one can have a nettop which does everything this does and much much much much much much more.
If it was a marketing attempt, it reeks of a desperate hail mary pass. LOL
Not sure what I think about this latest drama. Certainly a possibility that it’s a marketing ploy but who knows. I do think it will cost more than Arrington wanted if it is actually released.
“so far, the CrunchPad has been nothing more than vapourware.”
Well, not exactly. There was this video that came out several months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-0Nce5oTQ
Edited 2009-12-05 00:30 UTC
While I have no doubt that greedy marketing executives would steal an idea outright to pad his or her own pockets, this Crunchpad debacle sounds almost too scandalous. I’m sure the whole affair was concocted to drum up media coverage and generate sympathy for the “ousted” developer. In my opinion, the device will sell itself. Either it will deliver on the hype, or it won’t. End of story.
I find it horribly cynical of you to presume such manipulative behavior, perpetrated on a trusting cyber-readership, by Arrington or anyone else, solely for the scurrilous purpose of furthering their chances at collecting yet more filthy lucre. Really, you should be ashamed of yourself for such accusations.
… of course, you’re probably right …
…then I think it very well may backfire. At the moment I could see a lot of people boycotting buying the CrunchPad as long as Arrington is “locked out”.
I don’t think a boycott will stop it. More likely it will be the flurry of Lawsuits for IP theft, Copyright Theft and even patent violation that will start flying around.
Oh I almost forgot. DMCA and all that stuff come into play.
Prepare yourselves for SCO mk 2. It will be along haul with no winners except for the Lawyers (as always)
That just makes me want to buy it more.
I think this is a market ploy by both parties. What I think is that it was going to delayed again so instead of staying quite about it why not make it so people would be talking about the device. What better way to do that than with a controversial story.
To me this just seems the usual pains that arise when pie-in-the-sky plans developed by someone without the business knowledge to bring a product to fruition (much less calculate what it’s REALLY going to cost to build) butts heads with an actual business.
This can be seen in the rose-coloured glasses needed to come up with the original claimed feature-set at a price point of only $200. If a company with a deep-ass R&D like sony price-points a PSP3K at $189 and the PSP Go at $289 (street $150 and $260 respectively) there is no way in hell something with that big a display and that much Internet capability is going to cost less than a netbook.
Fusion Garage to me seems to at least have some business acumen, and technical understanding… While TechCrunch strikes me as pipe-dream idea men, with the naivete that usually goes with that.
Kind of like the OLPC … Arrington being the equivalent of Negroponte, throwing hissy fits over hardware vendors actually expecting to get paid for building ***, hissy fits over being told “Your price point is completely unrealistic”, and failing to understand the financial reality of bringing a product of this nature to market – or that just ‘being the idea guy’ doesn’t entitle you to the majority of the markup from sales. (Notice I say markup – since I get the feeling Arrington doesn’t even know the difference between it and profit)
Quite an odd take at that, since by all accounts so far Fusion Garage never was so much involved in the hardware side of things. They got involved late in the project to work on the software, after the first series of prototypes already was made. Seem like they may have handled some sort of following up on the manufacturer side. But by the sounds of it, more like convenience by being based in the same country, rather than providing hardware resources.
From the now removed web-pages of Fusion Garage, their contribution and product seemed to be a simple “OS” starting directly into a web browser. And with the emerge of ChromeOS, their presence in the future seem to become rater irrelevant.
No doubt Arrington have enough PR understanding that riding the ChromeOS hype would have made sense. And at that point it would have made Fusion Garage only option for further involvement, reducing it to a sw outfit tailoring ChromeOS to the CrunchPad rather than entrepreneurs delivering a valuable intellectual property in form of a “browserOS”.
Edited 2009-12-06 20:33 UTC
Umm.. Arrington has let’s say a casual relationship with the truth.
My advice would be to take anything he has to say with a dose of salt because he will probably tell some other story in a few weeks.
As Engadget is reporting, http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/05/michael-arrington-says-crunchpad… Arrington claims he’s the “outright owner of the CrunchPad trademark,” but that’s just a blatant lie. He applied for the CrunchPad trademark on November 17, the same day he says Fusion Garage notified him of the split.
That’s appears to me to be a cover your ass maneuver and he pretty much lied about it to his own readers. Everything about the story is pretty fishy.
That would be a very poorly executed plan if it were actually a coordinated PR stunt. I am more inclined to believe that the business interested made a decision which they think is within their authority to do based on the goals they set.
Well, this is the internet and Thom has the right to be a wacky conspiracy theorist as much as the next guy.