Betamax was technically superior to VHS, but VHS won because its cheap, permissive licencing earned it the crucial network effects that made it the default platform. (Incidentally, you could say exactly the same thing about MS-DOS.)
Also, VHS traded off longer runtime against higher quality, while Betamax traded off the other way. Turns out people don't like switching cassettes in the middle of a movie.
From the article:
> Betamax wasn't so much a bad product as a lesson in marketing gone awry.
Which means it wasn't a terrible invention at all. So again, why is it on this list?