What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

I liked the Transmeta web page from before they launched. It was just bare HTML with no styling. It said:

  This page is not here yet.

The product hype and lack of knowledge about what it was meant that nobody knew what to expect. In these hyped expectations, and with Torvalds on board, everyone expected that everything would be different. But it wasn't.

A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one.

The hype was part of the problem with Transmeta. Even in it's delivered form it could have found a niche. For example, the network computer was in vogue at the time, thanks to Oracle. A different type of device, like a Chromebook might have worked.

With Torvalds connected to Transmeta and the stealthy development, we never did get to hear about who was really behind Transmeta and why.

> A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one.

The problem with Segway in Germany was rather the certification for road traffic. Because of the insane red tape involved, the introduction was delayed, and for the same reason nobody thus wanted one.

The children of Segway are still here!

Electric unicycles and Onewheels!

And they're really fun!