Obituaries
For the free, the generous, and the unlimited — gone, and never for a reason anyone's proud of.
Ofo Put Millions of Yellow Bicycles on China's Streets for Anyone to Ride and Took a Small Deposit to Make Sure They Came Back. At Last Count, More Than Fifteen Million Riders Were Still Waiting for the Deposit.
Ofo was founded in 2014 by Dai Wei, a Peking University graduate, and began on that university's campus. The idea was simple enough to fit on a sticker. A yellow bicycle stood on the pavement, unattended. A rider paid through an app, cycled wherever they were going, and
Napster Let Anyone Download Any Song for Free. Metallica Personally Ended That.
For about two years, every song ever recorded was free, instant, and one search bar away. Napster launched on June 1, 1999, built by an 18-year-old college freshman who thought sharing MP3s should be as easy as saving a file, and by early 2000 it had roughly 80
Zillow Promised to Buy Your House in Two Days. It Lost $881 Million Finding Out Why That Doesn't Work.
An algorithm built for speed instead of accuracy bought thousands of homes for more than they were worth.
Saloons Gave Away Lunch With Every Beer for 80 Years. It Took Two City Bans and Prohibition to Stop It.
For roughly eighty years, the price of lunch in most American cities was one nickel beer. Saloons piled out spreads of oysters, roasts, cheese, and bread under the "free lunch" banner, on the understanding that a man who bought one drink would probably buy several more before he
Red Lobster Invented 'Endless Shrimp.' Then a Shareholder Who Sells Shrimp Made It Permanent.
A seasonal promotion became a permanent menu item, shrimp prices spiked, and the math never worked again.
FTX Was Worth $32 Billion in January and Bankrupt by November
Customer deposits were supposed to sit untouched at the exchange. Instead they went on a field trip to a hedge fund next door.
Enron Was America's Most Admired Company Right Up Until It Was a Crime Scene
Fortune named it America's most innovative company six years running. The innovation, it turned out, was mostly in the accounting.
JetBlue's All You Can Jet Pass (2009)
$599 bought a month of unlimited flights. JetBlue's booking system was not built for what happened next.
MoviePass's $9.95 Unlimited Movie Plan (2017–2019)
It promised a movie a day for less than the price of one ticket. The people who signed up took that extremely literally.
Baltimore's Docked Bike-Share Program (2016–2018)
It lasted under two years. Some cities lost half their fleets to theft and vandalism before the first winter was over.
Panera Cares, the Pay-What-You-Want Cafe Experiment (2010–2019)
Founder Ron Shaich called it a "test of humanity." After nine years and five locations, the results came back.
American Airlines' Unlimited Lifetime First-Class Pass (1981–2008)
Steven Rothstein flew 30 million miles for free. American Airlines flew into a $21 million hole. Only one of them saw it coming.