It's been an annual custom at ZDNet to point out which products and services from the technology industry win the prize for their sheer incompetence in terms of technical implementation and the spectacularity of their failure -- or because they just plain rubbed us the wrong way.
This was a banner year. We experienced such an overwhelming amount of these in our industry that we need an entire category dedicated to just the top winners, which we have grouped by significant technology vendors or segments. (See the full turkey menu here[1].) So without further ado, these are our Top 10 Tech Turkeys for 2019.
1. Google and Project Nightingale Invades Our Privacy
Up until last week, the Pixel 4 smartphone would have topped our list for its terrible battery life, poor onboard storage, underpowered RAM, and top-tier pricing[2]. It was a terrible follow-on to Pixel 3 which was appreciated for its excellent camera and low-light capabilities but did extremely weak sales in 2019[3]. But Google's foray into health data privacy -- with its $2.1 billion purchase of Fitbit[4] and its "Project Nightingale," in which it hoovered tens of millions of patient records at Ascension hospital facilities in the US[5] -- awards our friends at the Googleplex top billing for the absolute worst technology vendor of the year, and only bolsters our argument that the company should face massive fines and intense US government and EU regulation.[6]
2. Facebook and Twitter Disappoint Spectacularly
Do we know precisely when these highly popular social networks and media services went entirely off the rails -- in keeping the bile and toxicity off their platforms and protecting the privacy of their userbases? I don't know if it was