Open records
5 of 34 records, free, exactly as they appear in the set. 19 more verified records are in the purchased files.
| Company | Fork date | The fork | Options | Choice | Stated rationale | What happened | Judgment analyst | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbus Read the story → verified | 2000-12-19 | Whether to build a 500+ seat four-engine superjumbo betting on a hub-and-spoke future |
| Build the A380 superjumbo | Airbus read the future as a hub-and-spoke world where congested mega-airports meant the way to win was carrying more people per slot | 5 years · 2021-12 total deliveries: 251 passenger A380s delivered to 14 customers, all delivered as of December 2021 | reversibility low verdict reversed | Wikipedia / Airbus A380 (2000-12); Cirium / Ascend by Cirium (2022); The Register (2006-10); Airbus SE (2019-02); Wikipedia (2021-12) |
| Alphabet (Google) Read the story → verified | 2023-02 | Ship a system that will sometimes be confidently wrong, or wait until it isn't |
| Ship under competitive pressure | A rival made waiting look like weakness, so Google crossed its self-imposed reputational-risk line and shipped | Latest · 2023-02-08 Alphabet market value: Alphabet shed about 7.7% of its value - roughly $100 billion | reversibility low verdict held | Google (official blog) (2023-02); CNBC (2023-02); CNN Business (2023-02); Google (official blog) (2024-02) |
| Amazon Read the story → verified | 2003 | Whether to deliberately build and fund cloud infrastructure as an independent business rather than remain a retailer |
| Build cloud as independent business | Amazon's leaders thought of it as a technology company that had simply applied its technology to the retail space first | 5 years · 2015 Profitability vs forecast: Analysts described AWS as surprisingly more profitable than forecast | reversibility low verdict held | TechCrunch (2016-07); Hacker News (citing Werner Vogels on Quora) (2014-11); Fortune (2022-12); Amazon.com, Inc. (2016-01); Wikipedia (2024) |
| Apple Read the story → verified | 2004-11-07 | Whether to bet Apple on a keyboard-less touchscreen pocket computer |
| Bet on touchscreen architecture | The core architecture couldn't be retrofitted, so Apple committed to it before any market evidence | 3 years · 2008-07-11 App Store launch: The App Store launched July 11, 2008, more than a year after the phone shipped | reversibility low verdict held | United States District Court, Northern District of California (Apple v. Samsung) (2012); Apple / Macworld 2007 Keynote (transcript) (2007-01); Apple Newsroom (2007-10); Wikipedia / History of the iPhone (citing contemporaneous reports and Jobs open letter) (2007-09); Wikipedia (2024) |
| Apple Vision Pro Read the story → verified | 2023-06-05 | Price Vision Pro as a developer-platform filter or as a consumer device? |
| Price as developer filter | A new platform is worthless empty; a high price kept out casual buyers and let in committed developers. | 3 years · 2026-04 program status: M5 failed to revive interest, Vision Pro team redistributed, and Vision Air canceled | reversibility low verdict reversed | Apple Newsroom (2023-06); Bloomberg / Mark Gurman (Power On newsletter) (2024-02); Gizmodo (2024); MacRumors (2026-04) |
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- Fork date at the precision the record supports, never sharper.
- The fork, the options, the choice in the form the company faced them.
- Stated rationale as the company gave it or the record documents it, not our theory.
- Capital committed where the record states it; blank where it does not.
- Outcomes at one, three and five years or latest, each dated and cited.
- Reversibility and verdict as analyst judgments, marked as such.
- Every source, with dates and links, per record and in an appendix.