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Comment by terracatta | Hacker News Reader

GE is literally selling the metaphor for innovation and ideas for $250 million. It's also the last Edison original business.

Curious what others think, but I think they undervalue the brand value they are eroding by divesting from all of these low growth business that were the building blocks of their once great brand?

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Considering that the GE brand is mostly likely to be encountered by consumers is the appliance line, and that division and branding was sold to a Chinese company in 2016, I think this brand erosion is just another chunk of company brand falling into the sea.

This should be the top comment. GE effectively has nothing to do with the lightbulb brand anymore. They don't even own the naming rights to use their own name on lightbulbs that they could (but don't) make.

Did you mean to say 'appliances'?

This very article is about them divesting the lightbulb business which, according to the linked statement from GE themselves, will happen in mid-2020.

Yeah it's definitely part of a pattern of behavior that started with the ouster of Immelt.

Basically the start of their downfall was Trian Partners, an activist investor, bought $2.5 billion of GE stock in 2015 with the express goal of GE taking on a ton of debt to do share buybacks and raise the dividend

https://steveblank.com/2017/11/01/why-ges-jeff-immelt-lost-h...

Wasn't it GE's CEO who pushed the idea that the company's goal is to optimize share value ?

Karma's a bitch.

“Stakeholder capitalism” notwithstanding, that’s kind of the goal of every company.

Stakeholder capitalism is an oxymoron. You either hold capital or you bear the stakes. That’s the point.

Precisely

Thanks to Milton Friedman's doctrine [0]. Unfortunate that is viewed as the default goal.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

To me, this is like when IBM sold off the last of their computer line. It's a little sad, but I also don't want to buy a product from a company that has no incentive or priority to sell or service it.

IBM sold their personal computer business. They still make mainframes, and they design (but don't fabricate) POWER microprocessors.

Sure, it's a classic metaphor, but is sticking with the same basic product for over a hundred years really "innovation" in any meaningful sense?

I don't think GE was a big driving factor behind the innovation that has happened in the lighting industry in recent history, but they manufacture products that aren't incandescent bulbs.

I don't think there's many people out there other than Boomers that look at GE as an important brand name. I definitely don't have anything from them nor do I plan to buy anything any time soon.

I would think it might carry some weight in the trades though. If I have some electrical component and it says GE on it, I am going to trust it a lot more than a "happy smile electronics" part. Whether that trust is misplaced or not is a different conversation, though.

FWIW, Forbes ranks them #16 https://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/#tab:rank

I think they're probably fine without your dollars or mindshare.

I suspect part of the reason they're getting out of a lot of this commodity (or borderline commodity) businesses is because they make much more money on building power plants and wind turbines, jet engines, medical equipment (MRI/CT/PET/etc machines and more), etc.

Some quick digging, and it looks like their lighting and industrial controls division made all of $300m in profit. Their aviation products alone profited over $28b.

If I were them, I wouldn't care either.

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