
GE switches off light bulb business after almost 130 years - caution
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/ge-switches-off-light-bulb-business-after-almost-130-years/
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terracatta
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?

~~~
mlinhares
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.

~~~
jjeaff
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.

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viknod
GE lighting(for consumers) died a slow death starting with the elimination
incandescent bulbs. The twisty florescent were made in China on non-exclusive
contract, Walmart and whoever else wanted, bought the exact same bulb. What it
did achieve was elimination of a US workforce that was a growing financial
burden with retirement and medical benefits. Make no mistake, they architected
legislation to eliminate the incandescent. The price of the 60w equivalent CF
was four times it's incandescent counterpart, and bulbs that still failed on a
regular basis due to power supply design. This was the transformation to a
marketing/design company, similar to most companies that put their mark on
products today. With no differentiation, or passionate brand loyalty(for light
bulbs!?), it's a race to the bottom..

~~~
xkapastel
I'm a little confused, because I'm typing this underneath a GE incandescent
bulb, which is also the only type of bulb I use. Has this "elimination" not
happened yet?

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SisypheanLife
See
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_lighting_energ...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_lighting_energy_policy#Energy_Independence_and_Security_Act_of_2007)

The phaseout was defunded.

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iancmceachern
So GE doesn't make light bulbs, HP doesn't make test equipment, IBM doesn't
make computers, and AT&T doesn't have any phone lines. What a strange new
world we find ourselves inhabiting.

~~~
Aeolun
But look at all that shareholder value!

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wenc
I'm surprised GE stuck around in a commodity business for so long. Lighting is
something we'll always need but the prices are so low these days that I wonder
what their margins are.

Also, not sure what's next after LEDs.

~~~
musicale
> Also, not sure what's next after LEDs.

The latest and greatest LED lighting still looks awful to me - it seems fuzzy
and unpleasant even though it appears yellowish rather than the harsh blue or
weird glowing violet of earlier LED bulbs.

The spectrum from an incandescent bulb seems so much better.

I greatly prefer the low power, low heat, and long life of LED bulbs, but I
just can't get past the awful light that comes from them.

~~~
chiefgeek
Totally agree. I'm not a fan of the residential LED light bulbs that I have.
Even though they are supposed to be 3200ºK there's weird color fringing at the
penumbra and they cause a lot of metamerism on certain materials. And these
bulbs were around $20/ea.

~~~
vram22
Clothes' colors look quite different from the original under (what I think is)
an LED light at night. That's clothes on a clothesline in a corridor outside
my house.

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madengr
Back in high school, in 1989, we got a tour of a GE light bulb factory (closed
now since 2010 when they outsourced to China). It was interesting as the
machinery looked to be early 20th century, but retrofitted as needed with
modern PLC. They had 18 parallel lines cranking out bulbs. The automated
warehouse was neat. Robotic pallet fetchers controlled by a VAX.

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kylek
_That should have been impossible. It was protected. I thought they made it
protected._

 _I 'm looking ..._

 _Can they save it? Keep all the pieces together, maybe they can save it._

 _There 's nothing to save. Look for yourself. It's just ... gone. There's
nothing left._

~~~
analognoise
[https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/livermore-
californ...](https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/livermore-california)

...what the fuck is this?

~~~
ckozlowski
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776)

Just found this now myself. Amazing what you come across in an HN discussion.
Fascinating!

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chiefalchemist
I recently finished reading "Imagine It Forward" by Beth Comstock. It was
story-based lessons from her time at GE and NBC. She discusses the perils of
this division. Evidently, per the book, this was been a long time coming.

As a side note, the book is good. I don't want to oversell it but it reminded
me of "Creativity, Inc." And while the context is corporate/enterprise, there
were plenty of valuable takeaways for any company where people matter and
change is a given.

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MintelIE
I use incandescents at my home because the alternatives are very RF-noisy.
GE's incandescents are (were?) among the worst for life. Thankfully there are
American companies making quality incandescents right here at home now.

~~~
jjeaff
Interesting. Are you trying to reduce rf noise because it interferes with
something? How do you measure the RF noise? I have several high quality
Bluetooth devices and keep getting occasionally spotty service. I'm thinking
it is rf interference.

~~~
MintelIE
I listen to short wave radio, and my radio itself is an excellent RFI
detector. I just wandered around the house with it holding it up to things
until I identified the problem. The only things really emitting lots of RF
were LED and CFI bulbs, and a couple cheap power supplies for Netgear info-
appliances.

~~~
ryanobjc
There are LED bulb requirements in California, and people have mocked them,
but as I understand it they are supposed to help address this issue, as well
as color quality and audible noise issues.

In other words, California says no to cheap shitty bulbs.

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someonehere
Does this mean they’re ending the C by GE bulb line? They’re the IoT connected
bulbs.

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coliveira
GE is practically a bankrupt company. They are planning to survive by selling
assets and using the practically guaranteed bonds provided by the Fed. Nobody
knows how long this will work out for them.

~~~
nogabebop23
They have almost 300 billion in assets, including 35+ billion in cash. They've
cut debt in 1/2 in the past 5 years.

Not exactly "practically bankrupt" but hey, random internet comment...

~~~
coliveira
That's not the issue. GE has a lot of liabilities in the future, not only
loans, but also including billions they will need to cover for their failed
insurance business. They under insured long term care and now these costs are
skyrocketing. In the past they promised to sell business units to pay these
future liabilities, however it seems that their businesses are shrinking, not
increasing. If they cannot turn around and improve their business, they won't
have enough to sell to cover the growing liabilities.

Insurance liabilities were valued at $38Bi in 2018, and these costs are only
going up:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-insurance/exclusive-
ge...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-insurance/exclusive-ge-seeking-
to-shed-troubled-insurance-business-sources-idUSKCN1IN2NA)

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Simulacra
After crushing the Incandescent bulb to prop up Theke nascent fluorescent/LED
bulb market, Like a Walmart in a small town, they leave and let the rest of us
pickup the pieces.

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downerending
Was expecting this to have something to do with the shift away from
incandescent bulbs, but apparently not.

(Is it just me, or do the newer, environmentally friendly bulbs seem not to
last nearly as long?)

~~~
ubercore
My LED bulbs last forever. As in, I've never had one fail since I started
using them.

~~~
Exmoor
What kind of bulbs are you using? I've had a similar experience the OP with
LED bulbs using the Feit ones sold at Costco. At some point I read about a
design issue where manufacturers are using cheap components which die much
faster than the actual LED's wear out, so even though the LED's are rated for
50,000 hours, the bulb itself will stop working after 10,000 hours (made up
numbers). I would will to spend a bit more if I could be confident that I was
going to get a bulb that actually lasted the lifespan of the LEDs.

~~~
ubercore
Philips Hue, and the original warm-light bulbs that Philips had a long time
ago (the ones with the yellow plastic). Also a few cheap-o ones from the
electric company (CREE I think?). None have failed

~~~
mjcl
Yeah, I have about 15 of the old yellow/silver Phillips LED lights and they've
been fantastic. The only one that has died overheated because it was in a
globe fixture without enough airflow to cool the bulb.

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ihuman
Does anyone here use their zigbee or z-wave switches? I was considering
getting them, but if they're leaving the lighting business then I might not.

~~~
dnr
If you look at reviews of Z-Wave dimmers and switches, as I did recently, GE
seems to be not very well regarded, and on the expensive side. Some of the
newer brands like Zooz and Inovelli have a lot more features and are cheaper
too. I narrowed it down to those two and then recently replaced a bunch of
switches with Zooz products. Happy so far. (Can't speak for zigbee.)

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pstrateman
That's sad the GE bulbs were high quality.

~~~
kjaftaedi
I think you might have missed their ridiculous 'smart' bulbs

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo)

~~~
gundmc
I have to do this every month or two to reset my bricked lights. This video
made me involuntarily twitch. Awful, awful experience.

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unnouinceput
250M USD only for an entire division? That's pocket change. I wonder why such
a low price.

~~~
Kihashi
Most of GE's consumer lighting business had already been sold off. Also,
Lighting was never a super large part of GE by revenue or profit.

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microcolonel
Link is broken, actual link is [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2020/05/ge-sw...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2020/05/ge-switches-off-light-bulb-business-after-
almost-130-years/)

~~~
floatingatoll
I emailed the mods about this using the contact link in the footer.

~~~
dang
So you did. Thanks!

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emmelaich
Visiting the USA, I was surprised at how much advertising there was for GEICO.
Multiple ads per hour on various channels.

GE has been a finance and insurance company for some time.

~~~
dennyabraham
Though they have similar names, GEICO and GE are unrelated businesses. The
former is an acronymn for Government Employees Insurance Company, the latter
stands for General Electric

~~~
nogabebop23
If you remember 30 Rock, It's just "G" now - they sold the "E" to "Samesung"

