On Thursday, Blockbuster Alaska announced that the rental chain's last two Alaskan stores will shut down on Monday, with liquidation sales to follow. The news means that only one Blockbuster store will remain in the United States, in Bend, Oregon.
"We hope to see you at our stores during the closing, even if it's just to say 'Hello,'" the final two shops' managers posted in a Facebook announcement on Thursday. "What a great time to build your media library and share some Blockbuster memories with us."
Blockbuster fans, act now to return your late videos! Perhaps your late fees can keep them alive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 16 2018, @10:46PM
To be clear, in hindsight, these were all really dumb. On the other hand:
1) Many of these things looked "stupid" in the front. How many "stupid" things were not done which turned out to be the correct thing (such as this ongoing MoviePass thing, and nobody buying them). Just look at AOL-TimeWarner merger. It's easy to cherry-pick the ones that got away and miss the fact that that was the correct decision to do at the time given the information that was known. Unicorns are unicorns for a reason.
2) It's better than the alternative. Imagine if IBM still kept a death-grip on PC software. Imagine if the RIAA had properly monetized the Internet (DRM everywhere!). Many of these things turned out to be better for consumer in the long run. Dumb for an individual company (I still can't justify Xerox giving out all that GUI stuff) doesn't mean bad for mankind as a whole.