I was born in 1982. I remember my parents buying a VCR. That one broke, and we got another one.

It was a Betamax. Anyone remember those? Sony had this great format for Video Cassettes, but they only manufactured it themselves. Someone else had a larger, lower quality format, but they licensed it to anyone who wanted to build them.

Remember the VHS? Yeah.

Remember Betamax? FAIL.

Remember when IBM built their PC out of available parts, and Compaq copied it, and bought the same software from Microsoft?

Oh, yeah. That built an entire industry.

Remember when Apple kept closed and lost marketshare they haven’t gotten back? (I’m an Apple user, but still)

Remember AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi? FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL.

Remember when Yahoo! and Microsoft! and MySpace used OpenID and OAuth, and everyone knew how to use it because they were open standards or commodity products?

Remember when Facebook kept their “connect” protocol proprietary?

I won’t say that one is better than the other…because I haven’t seen either product.

I just wonder if CEOs read history.