An ’08 Dot-Bomb Blows Up For Good

Primarily for folks in this area, I should note what appears to be the passing into history once and for all of Worldgate Communications in Bensalem, Pa., noted in this Bucks County Courier Times story from last Friday.

As the article notes, the company was founded in 1995 to provide Internet and Email access through cable TV and set-top boxes provided by Motorola noted here (a company closely tied to Worldgate) and this May 1999 press release touted that its service (using its Channel Hyper Linking technology) was being deployed in thirteen countries on five continents, with nineteen cable companies signing either trial or deployment agreements with Worldgate (and as the ’97 link notes, Worldgate was portrayed in the trade press as some kind of a daunting rival to Microsoft – such heady days).

I remember Worldgate in particular because I interviewed there for a job, and you have to understand that they, along with Vertex the next exit up on the PA Turnpike, were supposed to be the leaders in the PC-Internet renaissance that was intended to establish Bucks County, Pa. as some kind of a hub of software development.

And the interview experience was one of the more interesting ones that I can recall; the hiring manager demonstrated the company’s product by pointing this rather large and cumbersome keyboard at a 19-inch T.V. screen, linking to TV programs and web addresses and accessing Email. The product actually did work reasonably well, but I thought to myself that there’s no way Mr. and Mrs. Delbert and Norma Jean White Bread America is going to bother with a contraption like this when they decide to settle down for an evening of Full House, Roller Derby or Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power.

And apparently, I was right, though based on this article, interactive Internet TV is a reality in Belgium courtesy of Siemens (ugh), and the menu selections of Verizon FIOS TV, by the way, are kind of Windows-ish in the use of drop-down lists and nested selections.

Anyway, back to Worldgate; by 2002, things were starting to slide (here, also noted in the Courier Times story), and the company dumped everything into developing the Ojo personal video phone. That never panned out either.

It’s a shame in a way because Worldgate was a comparatively minor player that made a big splash at first that they could not build upon, though they will not be around to see the eventual integration of television and the Internet; this surely will happen, though that is a bone that will be chewed upon, if you will, by much bigger “dogs” than they could have ever hoped to become.

And I guess this also means that I can definitely kiss my interview writing samples goodbye once and for all.