The Top 5 Dumbest Moments in Business this Year

Tony Hayward's Slip – Who could forget the disaster that BP caused this year. The April 20^th oil spill that became media circus and a horrible disaster for our environment brought the company under fire for its shoddy business practices and poor disaster management. If the spill wasn't bad enough, CEO Tony Hayward's conduct following the disaster was even worse. In one of his more memorable quotes, he said “There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I want my life back.” a month after the start of the oil spill began. His statement wasn't met with much empathy from the 13 workers who lost their lives in the disaster. To make matters worse, Hayward took a vacation on June 19^th to watch a yacht race. He was replaced as CEO on July 27^th.

Gap Changes Logos, Sort of – One of the largest clothing retailers decided it was time to shake things up. They changed their classic logo and opted for a “more contemporary” design. But, customers hated it and they ended up having to change it back to the more familiar logo and apologized on Facebook to customers saying, “Ok, we've heard loud and clear that you don't like the new logo...we're bringing back the Blue Box tonight.”

iPhone 4: You're Holding it Wrong: The newest generation of the iPhone was so hyped and was one of the most anticipated new items of 2010. With customers lining up at midnight to buy your product, you would have to be stupid to do anything to risk alienating them. Within a month of the June 24^th release, Steve Jobs reported that 3 million phones had been sold. But, sales slowed after users complained about the antenna problems that seemed to plague the phone. YouTubers started uploading videos demonstrating how the phone loses reception with different hand placements. In response to customer inquiries, Jobs, the Apple CEO said “Just avoid holding it in that way.” This wasn't good enough for Apple customers and Jobs seemingly condescending response left many feeling upset at the lack of customer concern.

Microsoft Kills its Kin – The Microsoft Kin was a very short-lived phone that allegedly cost Microsoft almost $1 billion to create and launch. It was discontinued just over a month after its May 13^th release. The bad sales and high price left customers unimpressed with this “not-so-smart-smartphone”.

Google Buzz – In February, Google announced its new service, Google Buzz. The social media platform by Google looked promising, but was quickly met with reports of privacy flaws. It seemed that people who used Gmail were automatically enrolled in Buzz and given default followers. The problem was that suddenly, Gmail users were having their profile information, email address and online status being shown to anyone who used Google Buzz. Many tech sites like PCWorld were quick to tell users how to disable the Buzz accounts. The privacy flaw was so bad that Google was even hit with a lawsuit on February 16^th. The problem with Buzz cost them a settlement of $8.5 million (which is probably change-in-the-couch money for Google).