Hacker News

While Zip was the most successful of the Superfloppies, it was never ubiquitous.

...

The reason it vanished quickly was simple: Zip was never that good and CDRW was much better. As soon as the prices dropped for CDRW, Zip was a goner.

They all made the same mistake: trying to extract monopoly rents instead of becoming an open standard. Same reason why most of Sony's bullshit over the years (betamax, minidisc, memory stick, etc.) failed, regardless of whether it was technologically "good" or not.

There could have been room in the market for a standardized superfloppy, but the companies making them relegated themselves to be niche by their greed well before CDRW finished them off.

(I owned a zip drive as a teenage computer nerd, BTW. Pretty sure I still have it in a box somewhere.)