Danger, Inc. was a company specializing in platforms, software, design, and services for mobile computing

Mobile computing

Mobile computing is a form of human–computer interaction by which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage. Mobile computing has three aspects: mobile communication, mobile hardware, and mobile software...

 devices. Its most notable product was the T-Mobile

T-Mobile

T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...

 Sidekick (also known as Danger Hiptop

Danger Hiptop

The Danger Hiptop, also re-branded as the T-Mobile Sidekick, Mobiflip and Sharp Jump is a GPRS/EDGE/UMTS smartphone produced by Danger Incorporated from 2002 to 2010....

).

The company was originally started by former Apple Inc., WebTV and Philips

Philips

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

 employees Andy Rubin

Andy Rubin

Andrew Rubin is a technology pioneer, co-founder and former CEO of both Danger Inc., and Android Inc. He is currently Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, where he oversees development of Android, an open-source operating system for smartphones...

, Joe Britt, and Matt Hershenson. Danger was acquired by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 on 11 February 2008, for a price rumored to be around $500 million (USD).

The former Danger staff were absorbed into the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, where they worked on a future Microsoft mobile phone platform known as "Project Pink" which would eventually be released as Kin. However, by October 2009, most of the ex-Danger employees had left Microsoft. The Register described it as "a classic case of M & A

Mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...

 failure, where the acquirer has failed to integrate either the technology or the people from the company that it bought."

Co-founder Andy Rubin left to create the company Android, which then got acquired by Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

. At Google, he become Director of Mobile Platforms, overseeing development of Google's Android phone platform. , Rubin heads Android development bringing former Danger Director of Design Matias Duarte

Matias Duarte

Matias Duarte is a Chilean-American computer interface designer, and currently the Director of Android operating system User Experience at Google where Android 3.0, was the first release with a major element of his design influence....

 to Google.

October 2009 data loss

In early October 2009, a server malfunction or technician error at Danger's data centers resulted in the loss of all Sidekick user data. As Sidekicks store users' data on Danger's servers—versus using local storage—users lost contact directories, calendars, photos, and all other media not locally backed up. In an October 10 letter to subscribers, Microsoft expressed its doubt that any data would be recovered.

The customer's data that was lost was being hosted in Microsoft's data centers at the time. Some media reports have suggested that Microsoft hired Hitachi

Hitachi

Hitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...

 to perform an upgrade to its storage area network

Storage area network

A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...

(SAN), when something went wrong, resulting in data destruction. Microsoft did not have an active backup of the data and it had to be restored from a month-old copy of the server data, totalling 800GB in size, from offsite backup tapes. The entire restoration of data took over 2 months for customer data and full functionality to be restored.

The Danger/Sidekick episode is one in a series of cloud computing mishaps that have raised questions about the reliability of such offerings.

On 15 October 2009, Microsoft said they had been able to recover most or all data and would begin to restore it.