In the fast-paced world of innovation, every breakthrough carries the risk of missteps, miscalculations or under-delivering on promises.

The biggest tech story of 2024 — the CrowdStrike outage that affected businesses and consumers nationwide — was also one of the year’s most notable failures. But the CrowdStrike story is more than just a story of failure—it’s also a testament to resilience and recovery.

TechRepublic compiled the year’s top tech flops and examined how they were addressed — or left unresolved.

SEE: These are the hottest cybersecurity news stories of 2024.

CrowdStrike bug stranded travelers amid mass blue screens of death

On the morning of Friday, July 19, the CrowdStrike cloud security platform released a content configuration update for Windows. A flaw in the Content Validator used in the update caused a cascade of errors that spread across CrowdStrike’s customers. That customer group included approximately 8.5 million Windows devices in businesses, airports and emergency services departments.

CrowdStrike fixed the issue on their end 78 minutes after the update. However, affected machines had to be manually rebooted, which created enough work for their team over the weekend.

Major data breaches hit communications networks and personal data

Two major data breaches have reminded cybersecurity professionals to stay on their toes. In August, the UK’s National Public Data – a consumer background check service – suffered a breach that exposed Social Security numbers among 2.7 billion data records. The exploit sparked discussions about legal protections for personal data.

In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of threat actors associated with China gained access to US broadband networks, specifically through Cisco routers. Both US and international cyber security agencies have issued warnings about the threat group known as Salt Typhoon.

Google AI Overviews faced a ‘rocky’ launch

Google launched its AI-powered answers in search this year, with mixed success. In May, the AI’s answers went viral as Google apparently recommended “eat at least one small stone a day” and confidently repeated a political conspiracy theory. The comment about rocks was taken from a satirical website, and the conspiracy theory came from Reddit. In response, Google limited user-generated content in AI overviews and worked on detecting “nonsense queries.”

The situation highlighted the limits of how generative AI retrieves information from the Internet.

Privacy is about cloud Microsoft’s recall

2024 was the year of the AI ​​computer, with many different technology companies racing to identify which AI features would gain the most traction.

Microsoft is betting on the appeal of using AI to control computers or search for files using natural language. The Recall feature promised to intuitively answer questions like “Where did I put the confirmation email for the restaurant for Saturday?” However, this convenience came at a price: Recalling screenshots of active windows every few seconds, saving them as a timeline, raising privacy and data usage concerns.

Microsoft delayed Recall’s public appearance. Recall is available from December 6 in preview to Windows Insiders.

Wearable AI rises – and falls

Two new AI products experimented with form factor this year.

The Humane pen was designed as an AI assistant clipped to clothing, while the makers of the Rabbit R1 pitched it as a replacement for a smartphone. The pen generally received negative reviews and a fraction of the expected sales. Rabbit R1 has a consequence similar path. These devices are smart because generative AI can open up new possibilities for form factors.

Both Humane and Rabbit devices are still for sale. But the wide adoption of those form factors — including smart glasses — has been an uphill road even for the tech giants. Ultimately, wearable, AI-first devices in 2024 were a dead end.

Intel has had a tough year

Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors have seen widespread instability and crashes for years. Intel has discovered a bug microcode algorithm which caused problems this summer. They finally delivered a patch. Intel stock and market share fell as rivals NVIDIA and AMD benefited from the generative AI boom. Intel may recover if CPU sales improve next year, but for now they’ve missed the boat on the AI ​​hardware boom despite a portfolio of reliable products.

Tesla autonomous products are on shaky ground

Tesla’s ambitious self-driving mode has faced several setbacks since mass recalls last yearincluding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the automaker four specific accidents. Another investigation linked the self-driving mode dozens of deaths. Tesla’s Q4 vehicle safety report claims Autopilot has fewer accidents per million miles than the average American vehicle.

Meanwhile, further reports revealed that many human Tesla robots operated by humans. Tesla doubled down and released a video of an Optimus robot working “by itself” in a factory.

Sales of the electric cars in 2024 as other automakers have matured in the “green” market, although Tesla remains a strong contender.