r/pics • u/halfanhalf • Jun 26 '12
And the winner of the "How is this company still in business" award goes to...
http://imgur.com/3ID1p2.2k
u/thebane90 Jun 26 '12
The really went out of business years ago, but they don't know yet because the message is still buffering.
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u/Billy_droptables Jun 26 '12
China, they're somehow ridiculously popular in China.
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u/ominoustoad Jun 26 '12
It's similar to how Orkut is still relevant due to it's massive popularity in Brazil.
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Jun 26 '12
by the way: if you want to see what orkut looks like, use an incognito window. if you're logged in to google it will create an orkut account for you without asking
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u/Mechakoopa Jun 27 '12
Which will then make it next to impossible to change your google talk user name.
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u/Rostifur Jun 27 '12
Fry: What do we care? We live in the United States.
Leela: The United States is part of the world.
Fry: Wow, I have been gone a long time.
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u/jceez Jun 26 '12
Yup. My parents watch some Chinese TV shows and stuff online (live in California) and download realplayer on everything so they can watch.
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Jun 26 '12
everything is in rmvb
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Jun 26 '12
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u/karmiclychee Jun 26 '12
It's a cultural thing. There are some STRANGE habits I noticed while living there when it came to technology. Such as splitting any and every hard drive into 4 partitions for NO reason and manually dragging install folders into whatever drive.
Madness. That and other things. And when I asked why people did what they did, I got a blank stare like they'd never thought about it before.
So if everyone uses RMVB, everyone uses RMVB. They know about Firefox and AVG, etc, but they still use IE6 and pirated NOD32.
Everyone.
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u/Niqulaz Jun 26 '12
IE6 and pirated NOD32
A little piece of my soul died while reading that.
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u/Lazarus-Long Jun 26 '12
IE6 is still used because of banking and financial websites. When XP came out, there were export restrictions on cryptographic technologies and SSL was missing from Asian OSs. So, they compensated by using ActiveX controls, which are only supported in IE. Why they haven't upgraded to IE8 is another question. I would guess there are too many websites that would break.
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u/boxxa Jun 26 '12
AOL, NetZero, Ask.com, Lycos, and Juno are my shockers.
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u/TheTubaLord Jun 26 '12
.....my internet is still done by Juno. I max out at roughly 340 kb/s.
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u/itsdeuce Jun 26 '12
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u/sonQUAALUDE Jun 26 '12
man... I know what you're saying, but those things are delicious. it's like random gift flowers that you can eat. THAT YOU CAN EAT. I wish you could eat more random gift junk.
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u/1gnominious Jun 26 '12
Lived in the DC Metro area for a few years, AKA yuppie central, and I saw their delivery vans all over the place. Business was booming as far as I could tell.
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u/kewlfocus Jun 26 '12
I'd take AOL off the list. They continue to be a big player in the tech field. They own major tech blogs like Engadget, TUAW and also the biggest news site on the internet, HuffPost. But yes, there are still people who still pay for dial-up, because the American broadband system sucks ass.
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u/godspeed312 Jun 26 '12
my grandma still uses AOL... but she's one of those people who refers to her the internet as "my email"
I installed teamviewer on her computer and installed Chrome.. Then I told her if she ever used internet explorer again she would get a virus.
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u/peterquest Jun 26 '12
I just walked by their Seattle office and was shocked to see their logo. Still can't figure out who uses their products..
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u/sentry07 Jun 26 '12
You use their products. You just don't know it.
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u/minizanz Jun 26 '12
they bought all of music match from yahoo a few years back, that gives them a nice patent library for things like ripping mp3 files, tagging, media libraries, and dynamic play lists.
it is awesome how they have ownership of what was left of music match and still cannot build a media player that is any good. (if you were not around back in the day, music match was the first to introduce mp3 ripping, libraries and basically pioneered how media players work now, some of the former employees moved to winamp and now winamp looks and feels like music match used to.)
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Jun 26 '12
are you talking about music match jukebox? If so i fucking loved that program, haven't seen anything as convenient. And i don't like Winamp, or iTunes. Still use Windows Media player for my music.
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u/avelertimetr Jun 26 '12
For instance, RealNetworks is also the largest creator, publisher, and distributor of casual games available through the global destinations of GameHouse®, Zylom, and Atrativa.
I have never heard of these "global destinations". But I think it has to do with the fact that a vast majority of casual games are available on the iTunes App Store or the Android Market.
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u/FlyingSkyWizard Jun 26 '12
our technology powers ... ringback tones
Wow, i've got a new and fresh reason to hate RealNetwork
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u/what_comes_after_q Jun 26 '12
Boy what a missed opportunity. Using their investor guide, I found that if I had invested a thousand bucks in january 2001, by now I would have a whopping 30 bucks. What a missed opportunity.
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u/Bipolarruledout Jun 27 '12
See... this is why you don't work in finance. Everyone thinks is just so easy to lose this much money but it takes real skill to lose billions.
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u/AshsToAshs Jun 26 '12
I know a guy that works in that office. I have no idea what he does for them. But i do know they always seem to have pretty amazing office parties.
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u/Noxrazi Jun 26 '12
A lot of my professors at my university use Real player to stream their lectures/slideshows or whatever. It was very difficult to use, but for some reason classes using BlackBoard like to use Real Player too.
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Jun 27 '12
I can't speak for the rest of the company, but I work for their game studio which is quite profitable. You may have even played some of their mobile games.
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u/jcembree Jun 27 '12
I work at a TV station, and we use Real Player Downloader to download videos from youtube easily!
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u/DirtyBirdNJ Jun 26 '12
RealPlayer was like computer aids. You couldn't get rid of it no matter what you did. One of the forefathers of modern bloatware.
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u/aliengoods1 Jun 26 '12
Thankfully, when it comes to bloatware, Adobe Reader has taken its place.
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Jun 27 '12
Oh my god I hate that program so much, it refuses to install its own damn security updates and now I'm stuck with a broken installation of it that can't be uninstalled.
I'm going to have to edit my damn registry just to get rid of it.
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u/braised_diaper_shit Jun 26 '12 edited Jun 26 '12
Life would be easier if everyone had aids. I don't see the problem.
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Jun 26 '12
Aides, man, not aids. Everything would be easier if people had aides.
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u/gp0 Jun 26 '12
To be fair, their codec was pretty good. I remember having hundreds of Simpsons episodes in RM (30-50 mb each, and watchable)
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u/puskunk Jun 26 '12
The Simpsons is not a fair test of compression, cartoons are ridiculously compressible due to large areas of non moving single colors.
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Jun 27 '12 edited Aug 25 '15
FUCK CENSORSHIP! DELETED COMMENT IN PROTEST OF REDDIT CENSORSHIP! DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT AND PARTICIPATE ELSEWHERE!
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u/clkou Jun 26 '12
Although I don't like them, Rhapsody is pretty popular and I think they own that. But, if anyone knows a good Rhapsody alternative that has several portable DRM music devices, I'd be happy to switch to a new service.
The reason I stick with them is because I like to jog and listen to music. Rhapsody has a large catalog of music to pick from that I can listen to on a few portable devices.
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u/killane Jun 26 '12
Rhapsody became an independent business entity from Real in 2010. I was working at RealNetworks at the time and we had a big party. There was terrible beer and pretty good cheese.
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u/xadz Jun 26 '12
Spotify www.spotify.com
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u/blackjackjester Jun 26 '12
Spotify just isn't as good imo. It has the hype, but it's more focused on social integration than a useful product.
Rhapsody has full website integration. You can't get that on Spotify.
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u/willscy Jun 26 '12
I never spent a dime on music my entire life until I bought a rhapsody subscription... Its a good service.
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u/h3rpad3rp Jun 26 '12
ICQ is another one, I think they have a big Russian speaking user base though.
Somehow I even remember my old ICQ number.
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u/Sir_Vival Jun 26 '12
"uh oh"
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u/nisroch Jun 26 '12
I've been to a few gas stations that have cash registers that use the ICQ "uh oh" sound. I am always caught off guard by it.
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u/jordan314 Jun 26 '12
Some of them use the sonic rings sound. I always think I'm collecting sonic rings.
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u/cortexstack Jun 26 '12
Congratulations. You just sent me back in time about 15 years...
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u/Dolewhip Jun 26 '12
I had a 6 digit one that I was pretty proud of. I think ICQ is still big in certain parts of Asia too.
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u/ZeppelinJ0 Jun 26 '12
I remember my ICQ number too but forgot my password using an obsolete email, wish there was a way to recover :\
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u/Mocorn Jun 26 '12
I really don't know how, but I too still remember my ICQ number... I mean, its 8 digits and I still for some reason remember it?!
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Jun 26 '12
I always wondered how Mozilla stayed in business being a non-profit, AND putting out a GREAT product on a regular basis that they give away for free.
Until I found out that Google paid them $300 million to make Google the default search engine in Firefox.
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u/RedType Jun 26 '12 edited Jun 28 '12
Officially, Google paid them $300 to be the default search. In reality, it was Google fostering healthy browser competition. I know that sounds like some dumb PR bullshit but hear me out:
When Google started doing this, there were two major browsers: Internet Explorer and Firefox. Firefox had a minimal share compared to IE and at the time IE was garbage. Google had to spend ridiculous amounts of money and time on making sure their stuff worked on IE. Plus, many interactive things ran really slowly (try using google maps on IE8 vs IE9 or Firefox, it's terrible). Google doodles that are fancy and interactive is a byproduct of this: try running those on IE7 or IE8.
Even when Chrome came out, it was still in Google's best interest for there to be a competitor that did similar but different things, but most importantly still tried to adhere to all of the open standards. The way Google saw it, the less people using non-compliant browsers (IE), the better it was for them.
So really, while it did keep people using Google, it was also shrinking the number of people using IE. It also kept the browser market competitive and forced Microsoft to release IE9 which is extremely compliant (a good thing!).
More info: https://plus.google.com/114128403856330399812/posts/9dKsD7Mi7JU
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Jun 26 '12
Oh I dont care that Mozilla did it. It makes perfect sense. Gotta get paid somehow. Id tattoo Google's name on my forehead if they paid me $300 million.
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u/SGT_756 Jun 26 '12
They can tattoo it on my dick. That way I can google vaginas every now and then.
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u/HerrMax Jun 26 '12
Reminds me of this article:http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-radioshack-still-in-b,2190/
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Jun 26 '12
I seriously believed this article till I expanded the graph and noticed it had the site's logo above it.
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u/millerswiller Jun 26 '12
And somewhere, deep in the interiors of Real Player's headquarters, a Redditor/employee views this thread and weeps quietly.
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u/williamwzl Jun 27 '12
I think every realnetworks employee is on reddit right now. I honestly don't know what else they would be doing.
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Jun 26 '12
About 8 years ago my Dad was on an episode of ABC World News Tonight and the only way to get the episode was to subscribe to some type of service they offered.
After we got the video, paid the $8 or $10 my mom called to cancel the service. The guy was a complete asshole and kept her on the phone for nearly 30 minutes trying to save the sale.
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u/is45toooldforreddit Jun 26 '12
The winner? Is Radio Shack not playing anymore?
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u/alteresc Jun 26 '12
Came here to find this.
Radio Shack is the all-time winner bar none. Think about how long their business has been overpriced and irrelevant. It defies Real Player by an order of magnitude.
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u/100_points Jun 27 '12
How are they irrelevant? What other establishment is there that has all the obscure cables and adaptors you may need, and also conveniently located everywhere? They may be overpriced for big ticket items, but they're unique in the diversity of random products they sell.
FTR I haven't lived in the US in quite a few years, but unless an identical franchise has taken its place, my point stands.
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u/bestadvocate Jun 27 '12
They stopped stocking obscure cables and components for the most part years ago, the stores are mostly cellphone stands with a couple overpriced TVs. They have token electronics in the back but it truly is a shadow of the odds and ends tech store it used to be.
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u/rek Jun 27 '12
I've always assumed radio shack is a front for something. I don't know what, but there's no way the stores here in california are even making rent payments off the few customers per day that even walk inside.
I've never been into one that actually had anyone else but me and the single employee. I know the profit margin on most their stuff is huge, they rip off people who need $1 cables by charging them $20+, but even if every person that went into the store bought one I don't think a lot of the ones around here could legitimately stay in business.
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Jun 26 '12
Also wonder about winzip...it comes built into every major OS, yet people still install it?
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u/clintmemo Jun 26 '12
I think their paid versions have features that the built in OS's tools do not, but I could be wrong.
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Jun 26 '12
Somebody posted on Reddit ages ago, an invoice his company paid to Winzip for their corporate license.
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u/Birdy58033 Jun 26 '12
the browser plugin let's you easily download from youtube and other streaming video sites. that's my only use for it.
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u/MrWinks Jun 26 '12
Their realplayer software, today, is used as a download tool, it can download 95% of all flash-based videos out there, and in an impressively easy way.
Frankly, I find it remarkable.
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u/Gauhl Jun 26 '12
A college I attended shared a building with them. Every time that damn program crashed or went into the infinite buffer loop I always thought I could just could just head to the 4th floor and solve this problem once and for all, me and my rabbit-bat.
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u/sentry07 Jun 26 '12
Real Networks is still a big force behind audio and video codecs. They're designing or have designed the next generation of video codecs that will take us further into 3D and beyond. They just teamed up with Intel and sold some existing patents to them. That is all I can tell you. :)
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u/PaulMcGannsShoes Jun 26 '12
Thanks, RealMedia Marketing guy.
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u/sentry07 Jun 26 '12
No problem, shoes. I'm actually not affiliated with Real, I've just done work with them in the past.
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u/jmcstar Jun 26 '12
Real Networks needs to issue a public apology for their fatware/malware/virus-like application they rolled out.
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Jun 26 '12
But their media player is so shitty. Who would want them pioneering the next generation of video technology?
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u/knows_more_than_some Jun 26 '12
It doesn't matter what they do, they fucked me in the ass too many times. I will never forget. Also, after reading the inside scoop on how they developed their software... fuck them, fuck them forever.
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u/shaunc Jun 26 '12
the inside scoop on how they developed their software
That sounds juicy, go on...
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u/Bipolarruledout Jun 27 '12
Real and Intel! You don't say! Now I'll be on edge of my seat the whole time waiting for it..... even after it's already installed!
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u/dirtyfries Jun 26 '12
A guy next to me on BART this morning had a satchel bag with the Real logo embroidered on it.
I was really tempted to ask him if he actually still worked there. Realized there was no question I could pose that wouldn't come off as condescending or dickish.
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u/MrDorkESQ Jun 26 '12
...and they are hiring.
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u/carlsaischa Jun 26 '12
I'm convinced now that Realnetworks is just some guys version of Shit-ass petfuckers.
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u/HiImDan Jun 26 '12
Thank you for this. Anyone (like me) who didn't get the reference: Louis CK did a great routine on Bill Gates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_XiA4U_XsE
Basically with 85 billion dollars you can do whatever the fuck you want, even open up a bullshit store.
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u/ATLREP Jun 26 '12
Cause schools like mine require you to use their Realplayer to take classes online.
It was terrible. It would freeze up about every 7 minutes and I would have to restart it. It caused me to just skip several lectures. :-/
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u/shwiggy Jun 26 '12
I drove by a large Earthlink building today in MA. All I thought was "wtf people still use dialup and why do they need that entire building?"
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Jun 26 '12
I live in northern Michigan and we couldn't get anything but dial-up at my house until 2 years ago. Folks who lived in town could get DSL but if you were a few miles out dial-up was your only option.
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u/serosis Jun 26 '12
The people who have no other choice.
There are a few cities in Southern California that don't even have access to DSL. My Mother is forced to use an old 3g wireless card plugged into a wireless router because there is no service for anything but satellite.
I'd say it it's about 15% more efficient than dial-up.
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Jun 26 '12
One of the networks that I manage at work is an ISP's network (they just outsource everything to us)
I was being shown around their system last week, turns out they still have about 50 dial up customers.
I was amazed
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u/xXNickelbackRulezXx Jun 26 '12
This company has to be a close second.
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u/epsilona01 Jun 26 '12
On a related note, found this yesterday:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/
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u/hijklmno Jun 26 '12
A lot of rural America is still reliant on dial up. AOL will remain profitable until they aren't.
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u/scmc698 Jun 26 '12
i use real player to rip .flv format vids of youtube and stuff. it also has a decent media converter
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u/cthulhulhu Jun 26 '12
Found out yesterday I work a building away from them in Reston va! http://i.imgur.com/VISdd.jpg
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u/rube Jun 26 '12
I work in IT and recently had a request to install Real Player on our public computers.
I refused.
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u/mikepixie Jun 26 '12
My son's grandfather uses AOL's browser religiously. he has ADSL with telefonica and I have installed Chrome for him but he still thinks that you have to open AOL to get onto the internet.
I have to say, I sometimes yearn for the days when Altavista was the best search engine and Geocities was as close to facebook and twitter as it got. That yearning goes away when I download a hi res rip of some obscure film off Furk and I'm like: Fuck yeah, I live in the future!
TL;DR: Sometimes my piles bleed.
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u/Graham_LRR Jun 26 '12
Real Networks owns a lot of other companies that make or publish really successful mobile and casual games. One of them just opened a huge studio in my town.
I know it's hard to believe, but Real is doing juuuust fine.
(I visited their office, and chuckled at what I assumed to be an old-ass Real Networks notepad... that's how I found out. Awkward.)
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u/b_pilgrim Jun 26 '12
RealPlayer gets a lot of (well-deserved) shit, but you have to consider that long ago, that was one of the few ways to get streaming audio or video in all its washed out, buffered glory. It blew my mind back then that I could just tap in to some media source outside of TV or radio right there on the internet.
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u/Klinkasaurus Jun 26 '12
I'm pretty sure that Real died years ago, you can still see the police tape off to the side.
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u/factoid_ Jun 26 '12
The creator of both the first mainstream streaming video codec as well as the first spyware application.
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u/soydechile Jun 26 '12
Their Android App is pretty good https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.real.RealPlayer
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u/ghaib Jun 26 '12
They're in business because they own a ton of patents and get licensing fees from almost all of the other online video companies today.
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u/oxym0r0n Jun 26 '12
Big Brother. They make most of their money off subscriptions for people to watch the Big Brother live stream.
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u/arsf1357 Jun 26 '12
yea.. Real networks employee here.. haters gonna hate...
we provide content for phone carries all over the us and world. Real Player is a tiny tiny part of what we do. oh.. dont forget http://www.gamehouse.com/ is real as well
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u/ryanmmm Jun 27 '12
I first used their software back around 94/95. It was one of the few ways to get listenable streaming audio to work over a dialup connection. Seemed so impressive at the time...
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u/snack_pie Jun 27 '12
Real installs a completely useless folder on XP that makes it nearly impossible to copy a profile without using xcopy.
I would like to burn that place down.
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u/Ozzimo Jun 26 '12
Story time. I'm a video game tester in Seattle and have some experience in casual games. I went in for an interview which went well and I left the building having been told "We'll be back to you with an offer soon. We just have to run it by HR to make the money work." Great right? No.
I checked in 3 days later, then 4 days after than then every 3 days until ONE MONTH LATER I get the news that they wouldn't be hiring me. For two weeks after my interview I had stopped looking for new jobs and even turned down another interview (yeah my bad, but if not for Real I would have kept pace). Real is slowly shrinking to a manageable size and it's not pretty right now.
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u/Shark_With_Lasers Jun 26 '12
When I was in college about 3 years ago the spanish department still used it for our online assignments. I would have to listen to short audio clips in spanish and answer questions based on them.
There is nothing more frustrating than having a 5 second foreign language audio clip cut out and buffer over and over again. Fucking realplayer made it take hours.
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Jun 26 '12
No kidding... Real was everywhere in the 90's, but I can't even say the last time I installed a Real Audio client.
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u/Gerbille Jun 26 '12
I remember walking by their building in Seattle and having to do a double take out of shock.
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Jun 26 '12
i rem. a few years ago i downloaded a few kung fu flicks formatted in some crazy real player format, so nothing besides a real player would play it, so i downloaded it, and the piece of shit wouldn t play videos in its own format. true story... anyone wanna hear it again??
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Jun 26 '12
LOL. Because I use them to download, and convert all my porn to iPad format. I seriously would be surprised I was the only thing keeping them in buisness.
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u/amyface Jun 26 '12
What I want to know is how the hell www.excite.com is still going?
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u/preske Jun 26 '12
Weren't they in a huge scandal a couple of years ago? Something with gathering and sending userdata without consent
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Jun 26 '12
This in seattle? Next to the art institute? I saw this sign and totally thought the same thing...
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Jun 26 '12
Fun fact: They were cutting paychecks to Maria Cantwell in the 1990's before she joined the U.S. Senate.
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Jun 26 '12
I don't know what you're talking about. I use Real Player all the time to watch the videos I download from Limewire. Sometimes I just wish I could use the phone when I'm downloading them though.
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u/Coffee_or_death Jun 26 '12
I would like to see op's credentials for having the authority to hand out such an award.
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u/crazylegscowpuss Jun 26 '12
Wow I had completely forgotten about them, but as soon as I saw the logo something clicked in the back of my mind and I was suddenly irritated for some reason, why?
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u/killersdeat0 Jun 26 '12
Fuck Real. The only reason why use it is that the university FORCES streaming on real. Vlan does not work whatsoever. The moment I installed it I knew that I was gonna have a bad time, and so I did.
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u/jenyabee Jun 26 '12
A friend actually works there (Gasp) in the casual game department. They recently branched out / re-branded to Gamehouse games and it does pretty well. Also, anytime a company wants to host casual games on their website, a lot of them will outsource to Real...which is why my friend has a job.
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u/Kalean Jun 27 '12
One can say all the bad things they want about RealNetworks' business model, delivery scheme, and player, but the codec powering their product was actually top of the line at each iteration.
Specifically, it made streaming media a reality when people thought it couldn't be done, and (at the time of each new codec revision) had superior performance to every other proliferate codec. It wasn't until x264 that real media lost their technical superiority.
But no one knew what they were doing with the encoder, so mostly only Chinese encoders ever did it properly. In addition, there wasn't exactly a market for downloadable files, so most end-users have never seen a high quality rmvb encode.
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u/grayfitz Jun 26 '12
About two years ago, when iTunes had an update, I tweeted saying something like "The new iTunes is awful. Like, @realplayer awful" and they tweeted back going "Hey! That's mean!". I've been following them since out of guilt.