Selling Palm to HP was a waste

webOS and the mobile devices that it powered made Palm (remember that company) a media darling. webOS was going to be another successful mobile Linux distribution (after Android). But it was all a dream that never came true. Palm was sold to HP. At some point, HP abandoned webOS, deciding that it was better to sell Android devices.

So webOS became Open webOS, which has since become a property of LG Electronics. For me, the story of webOS is, up to this point, a sad tale. But what does Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm and the guy responsible for webOS, think?

In an interview with Phil Goldstein, of FierceWireless, he said that selling Palm to HP was a waste. Mostly because the features that gave webOS buzz has been showing up in Android, iOS and even Windows.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

FierceWireless: Looking back, if you could do things over again with the rollout of webOS, would you do anything differently?

Rubinstein: Well, I’m not sure I would have sold the company to HP [Hewlett-Packard]. That’s for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don’t get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.

Read the rest here.