None of them saw Google coming until it was too late.
Umm... yes they did.
From 1998:
"Yes, there is a better search engine
While the portal sites fiddle, Google catches fire.
...
There is a better way to build a search engine. And a Silicon Valley start-up company with the unlikely name of Google.com is showing the way."
None of them told me that Apple was going to be the 7th largest company and a dominant player in music and mobile devices until Apple was the 7th largest company and dominant in music and mobile devices
More broadly, I'm not sure what your point is. Of course predictions are usually wrong. But the point of Techcrunch isn't the predictions, it's the analysis behind them. Often that's wrong, but the details of why their analysis is wrong is often where the interesting parts of the technology industry lay.
Just to be clear: the point is that wild speculative hype is rampant. The fact that they are occasionally correct is probably more a function of probabilities than legwork or rational thought.
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None of them saw Google coming until it was too late.
Umm... yes they did.
From 1998:
"Yes, there is a better search engine While the portal sites fiddle, Google catches fire. ... There is a better way to build a search engine. And a Silicon Valley start-up company with the unlikely name of Google.com is showing the way."
http://www.salon.com/21st/rose/1998/12/21straight.html (Yes, it's Salon, not TechCrunch - but it was 1998.)
Wired did similar articles. Here's one from 2003: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/google.html
None of them told me that Apple was going to be the 7th largest company and a dominant player in music and mobile devices until Apple was the 7th largest company and dominant in music and mobile devices
I'm sure they didn't use those words. But here's a prediction from 2008 (by Gartner!!!!) which talks about a $225 shareprice: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/26/morgan_stanley...
More broadly, I'm not sure what your point is. Of course predictions are usually wrong. But the point of Techcrunch isn't the predictions, it's the analysis behind them. Often that's wrong, but the details of why their analysis is wrong is often where the interesting parts of the technology industry lay.
Yes, you definitely missed the point.
Just to be clear: the point is that wild speculative hype is rampant. The fact that they are occasionally correct is probably more a function of probabilities than legwork or rational thought.