Prodigy’s e-commerce vision failed on assumptions about pricing and graphics.

Evidence

In case advertising didn’t work out, Prodigy also envisioned another lucrative revenue stream, this one reflecting Sears’s ownership. It saw itself becoming the world’s dominant computer-based shopping network, something akin to an early Amazon. “We had a belief that goods will be sold electronically,” said the CEO, Ross Glatzer, “so why not establish dominance in the marketplace?” Unfortunately, the entire retail strategy was based on a faulty premise: that online retailers would naturally be able to charge more than brick-and-mortar stores. It didn’t help that, given the state of computer graphics in 1992, one only had a rough idea of what one was paying a markup for. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 704

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of 1992 computer graphics being so crude you couldn’t tell what markup you were paying is a fun, tweetable history nugget.