A merger of Xerox and HP would say more about the past of the computer industry than the companies' future.
For anyone who has grown up in the computer technology era, the recent histories of HP and Xerox must elicit nothing but sadness.
The proposed bid would value HP at $22 per share, or $33 billion. The shares closed Thursday at $20.13. The HP board says only that it’s “committed to doing what is in the best interests of all HP shareholders.” Some speculate that Icahn may actually be interested in having HP bid for Xerox, a smaller company.
Xerox’s franchise eventually came under attack from Japanese companies selling cheaper copiers that could fit on a desk rather than a behemoth installed in a “copier room” to be fed by secretaries standing in line. McColough also perceived that the company was vulnerable to technological developments that might make paper obsolete in the office of the future.
Xerox did put PARC’s technology into a product, the Xerox Star, introduced in 1981. The Star was a gorgeous machine, integrating software and hardware so perfectly it never crashed, with a graphical display and point-and-click mouse . But it was conceived on a Xerox office machine scale, with a central unit needing its own room and big desktop workstations. A full networked installation would cost $250,000 in 1981 dollars. The product failed.
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