Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area

defunct American computer hardware and software company

Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A f

Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems on December 3, 2005.

former American company

AltaVista was a web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own search engine. On July 8, 2013, the service was shut down by Yahoo!, and since then the domain has redirected to Yahoo!'s own search site.

airline in the United States

1992–2010 American electronics company

American video game developer and publisher

Maxtor Corporation was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate in 2006. It was revived as a brand in 2016.

American video game company

Broderbund Software, Inc. (formerly stylized as Brøderbund) was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, and Prince of Persia (all of which originated on the Apple II), as well as The Print Shop—originally for printing signs and banners on dot matrix printers—and the Myst and Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to San Rafael, California, then later to Novato, California. Broderbund was purchased by The Learning Company in 1998.

Theranos Inc. () was an American privately held corporation that was touted as a breakthrough health technology company. Founded in 2003 by then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos raised more than US$700 million from venture capitalists and private investors, resulting in a $9 billion valuation at its peak in 2013 and 2014. The company claimed that it had devised blood tests that could be performed rapidly and accurately, while requiring very small amounts of blood, all using compact automated devices that the company had developed. These claims were proven to be false.

American video game development studio

Zip2 Corp. was a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers. The company was founded in Palo Alto, California, as Global Link Information Network, Inc. on November 9, 1995, by Greg Kouri and brothers Elon and Kimbal Musk. Initially, Global Link provided local businesses with an Internet presence, but later began to assist newspapers in designing online city guides before being purchased by Compaq Computer in 1999.

NexGen, Inc. was a private semiconductor company based in Milpitas, California, that designed x86 microprocessors until it was purchased by AMD on January 16, 1996. NexGen was a fabless design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. NexGen's chips were produced by IBM's Microelectronics division in Burlington, Vermont, alongside PowerPC and DRAM parts.

American film production company

Sybase, Inc. was an enterprise software and services company. The company produced software relating to relational databases, with facilities located in California and Massachusetts. Sybase was acquired by SAP in 2010; SAP ceased using the Sybase name in 2014.

defunct American video game developer based in Emeryville, California

Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged to broadcast a wide variety of user-generated live video content, called "broadcasts".

American former producer of arcade games, and originally part of Atari, Inc.

American video game developer

Signetics Corporation was an American electronics manufacturer specifically established in Silicon Valley to make integrated circuits. Founded in 1961, they went on to develop a number of early microprocessors and support chips, as well as the widely used 555 timer chip. The company was bought by Philips in 1975 and incorporated in Philips Semiconductors (now NXP).

PeopleSoft, Inc. was an American company that provided human resource management systems (HRMS), financial management solutions (FMS), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise performance management (EPM) software, as well as software for manufacturing, and student administration to large corporations, governments, and organizations. It existed as an independent corporation until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2005. The PeopleSoft name and product line are now marketed by Oracle.

company

former Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment

American airline operator

American video game publisher and developer

former American game development studio

American computer hardware manufacturer ( 1974–1997)

Cinemaware was a video game developer and publisher. It had released several titles in the 1980s based on various film themes. The company was resurrected in 2000, before being acquired by eGames in 2005.

American video game developer

American mainframe computer manufacturer

former airline in the western United States

American video game developer

American media company

NetSuite Inc. is an American cloud based enterprise software company. They provide products and services tailored towards small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), including accounting, financial management, customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, human capital management, payroll, procurement, project management, and e-commerce software. NetSuite was founded in 1998, and is currently headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company is seen as the first cloud computing software company, pre-dating Salesforce by roughly a month. Oracle acquired NetSuite for approximately $9.3 b

Imagic ( ) was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, and Demon Attack. Imagic also released games for Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit computers, TI-99/4A, IBM PCjr, VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Magnavox Odyssey². Their Odyssey² ports of Demon Attack and Atlantis were the only third-party releases for that system in America. The company never recovered from the video game crash of 1983 and was liq

game development company

American video game development company

former media company

RedOctane, Inc. was an American electronic entertainment company. They were best known for producing the Guitar Hero series, beginning in November 2005. RedOctane became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision in 2006, which later closed down in February 2010.

American computer company (1980–1985)

defunct interactive movie developer from San Mateo, California

company

American video game developer

American software company

TeleVideo Corporation was a U.S. company that achieved its peak of success in the early 1980s producing computer terminals. TeleVideo was founded in 1975 by K. Philip Hwang, a Utah State University, Hanyang University graduate born in North Korea who closed a successful 7-Eleven franchise he and his wife had run, and invested $9000 in savings in the new company. Hwang had run a business producing CRT monitors for arcade games since 1975. The company was headquartered in San Jose, California. thumb|A TeleVideo terminal model 925 made around 1982

computer company in United States

hard drive manufacturer

Seesmic was a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allowed users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.

business

'''Mervyn's''' was an American middle-scale department store chain based in Hayward, California, and founded by Mervin G. Morris (1920–2021). It carried national brands of clothing, footwear, bedding, bath products, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, toys, and housewares. Many of the company's stores were opened in shopping malls; however, some locations were operated independently. Based on 2005 revenue, Mervyn's was the 83rd largest retailer in the United States.

freeware and shareware provider

Solyndra was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin film solar cells. It was based in Fremont, California. In 2009, the Obama administration co-signed $535 million in loans to Solyndra.

company

thumb|Webvan Webvan was a dot-com company and grocery business that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after three years of operation. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It delivered products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. At its peak, it offered service in ten US areas: the San Francisco Bay Area; Dallas; Sacramento; San Diego; Los Angeles; Orange County, California; Chicago; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Atlanta, Georgia. The company had hoped to expand to 26 cities by 2001.

1970s computer company

defunct American video game developer

Solectron Corporation was an American electronics manufacturing company for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Solectron's first customer designed and distributed an electronic controller for solar energy equipment. The name "Solectron" was a portmanteau of the words "solar" and "electronics".