--- title: The Only Truly Failed Project | daily.dev description: Microsoft Bob, once heavily marketed by Microsoft, is often mocked as one of their biggest failures. Despite this, the project provided valuable lessons to its... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-only-truly-failed-project-sib938mee twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Only Truly Failed Project | daily.dev og:description: Microsoft Bob, once heavily marketed by Microsoft, is often mocked as one of their biggest failures. Despite this, the project provided valuable lessons to its... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-only-truly-failed-project-sib938mee og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/SiB938MEE.png og:image:alt: The Only Truly Failed Project og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Only Truly Failed Project **[Community Picks](https://daily.dev/sources/community)** · 7 min read · 18 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary Microsoft Bob, once heavily marketed by Microsoft, is often mocked as one of their biggest failures. Despite this, the project provided valuable lessons to its team, many of whom went on to achieve significant success in the tech industry. Examples include the co-founder of Valve, the creators of Picnik, and Melinda French, who later became Bill Gates' wife. Similarities are drawn with the Williams engineers who designed a revolutionary pinball machine, achieving success yet still facing layoffs. The post emphasizes that the true failures are those from which no lessons are learned. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@alissondereg** · 4 upvotes > Oh my I never heard about microsoft bob (I was born in 2002), seems so nice I wonder why it flopped. > Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the sentence "All the engineers involved not only survived these failures, but often went on to greater success afterwards.", very inspiring. **@nutch** · 1 upvotes > I loved Microsoft Bob. It was cutesy and fun and introduced the idea of having little helpful companions. It's also how Bill and Melinda met, so it at least kind of resulted in a helpful philanthropic foundation. **@mrsnake** · 0 upvotes > great post --- Tags: [#microsoft](https://daily.dev/tags/microsoft), [#project-management](https://daily.dev/tags/project-management) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-only-truly-failed-project-sib938mee) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Only Truly Failed Project","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-only-truly-failed-project-sib938mee","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-only-truly-failed-project-sib938mee"},"datePublished":"2024-07-17T19:23:04.537Z","dateModified":"2024-08-23T16:04:39.080Z","description":"Microsoft Bob, once heavily marketed by Microsoft, is often mocked as one of their biggest failures. 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It was cutesy and fun and introduced the idea of having little helpful companions. It’s also how Bill and Melinda met, so it at least kind of resulted in a helpful philanthropic foundation.","datePublished":"2024-09-27T21:26:11.530Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SiB938MEE#c-HSsmVmRQi","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Nicholas Hutchind","url":"https://daily.dev/nutch","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto/v1654354364/avatars/v590ZcRj5hNoBBeq0SEOv"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"great post","datePublished":"2024-08-02T10:20:22.594Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SiB938MEE#c-PPCblqcqq","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"kerem k","url":"https://daily.dev/mrsnake","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJlj64t5k79lsYhUYqt-zgd9SCMp4d8-OHRzfn-MVU_Cok=s96-c"}}]} ```