Top 10 technology also-rans

5. Netscape

Iain Thomson: Netscape basically seeded the internet revolution but now it's deader than paisley flairs with lemon piping.

Netscape was the first company to market a web browser that actually did things people wanted. It made the web accessible to businesses and consumers and was making a tidy profit selling its software. It's IPO is widely seen as the start of the internet boom but it was broken against the rock of Microsoft.

Bill Gates didn't understand the power of the internet initially, dismissing it as nothing more than a fad. Once he realised his mistake, he realised he panicked and got mad. Microsoft gave away its browser for free, essentially destroying Netscape's business model and driving the company into obscurity.

Nevertheless Netscape got its revenge. The company open sourced its browser and made Mozilla possible. Now Firefox is a huge thorn in Microsoft's side and is causing the boys and girls in Redmond more than a few headaches.

Shaun Nichols: Netscape could have been a contender, they could have been huge, but instead they were run into the ground in one of the most notorious feuds in tech history.

Riding the vision of Marc Andreeson, Netscape was the tool of choice for users who were looking to move beyond the early 'walled garden' ISPs and explore the larger web. The company was dominating the browser market and was poised to become the next giant of the computing world.

Then Microsoft came around. Wanting a piece of the web market, Redmond decided to leverage its dominance of the PC world and muscle in on Netscape's territory. The company bundled its own browser with Windows and did what it could to freeze Netscape out of the market.

As is often the case when Microsoft is involved, the better product didn't win, and when Netscape folded tens of millions of users were left with Internet Explorer, at least until Firefox and Safari came around.

4. Seattle Computer Products

Shaun Nichols: Though it seemed like a good idea when we were constructing the list, I have to re-think this one a bit. Though they suffered one of the saddest fates in IT history, Seattle wasn't exactly a major force in the computing world.

In 1980, the upstart SCP licensed off a bit of its software to Microsoft for US$25,000. Bill Gates was impressed with the company's new operating system project and offered to buy the rights to all of Seattle Computer's OS project for US$50,000.

A nice payday for SCP at the time, but this was also one of the most pivotal moments in computing history. Microsoft turned around and packaged much of that operating system to IBM as PC DOS. The rest is history. Microsoft became the biggest computer company in history and SCP faded away.

Iain Thomson: Was Bill Gates impressed? I doubt it. He was in a hole and SCP provided him with an out.

Gates had sold IBM on the ability to provide an operating system for its PC line. The fact he didn't have one is beside the point. Lots of industries sell vapourware for big contracts but it's the follow-through that counts.

3. Amiga

Iain Thomson: Amiga represented a viable competitor to IBM for the PC market, but came too early and was so badly managed that it's now just a ghost, spoken of whenever techies get together over a few drinks.

But, as said, the Amiga was an astonishing piece of kit. Five years after it came out I played games on it and asked loudly why my PC wouldn't do this stuff. The answer was down to hardware.

Amiga developed its own processors that were well suited to certain markets. Unfortunately for the company they were consumer markets and the public wasn't ready to buy computers at a rate that business was. Amiga computers were originally developed as games consoles and it showed but businesses weren't buying graphics so the company failed to make serious coin.

Amiga also fell into the Apple trap - it wanted total control of hardware. It was an understandable mistake but one that cost the company dear.

Shaun Nichols: Despite developing at a breakneck speed, the computer market is one of intense brand loyalty. As anyone who has ever spoken with a Mac or Linux enthusiast will tell you, users develop a passionate following to their computer of choice.

Amiga was just never able to spread far enough and win over enough customers to build a viable base. Users got comfortable with operating their Mac and PC systems at work, and later on when they purchased a home computer they stuck with what they knew.

That doesn't mean that the Amiga was not without its fans. In fact, many advocates of the platform are still around today and they will swear up and down that Amiga systems were light years beyond their competitors and, had the company prevailed, would to this day be far better than anything Apple or Microsoft could produce.

2. AOL

Shaun Nichols: Once the biggest name in the industry and an emerging monolith in the computing world, AOL is now a struggling firm with just 5,000 employees and a cautionary tale for would-be web entrepreneurs.

Born in the 1980s, AOL was one of the first companies to offer commercial internet service. When the browser developed and the world wide web formed in the 1990s, America Online was in prime position to take advantage of the market, and they did with a vengeance.

Taking the simplified 'walled garden' approach and an aggressive marketing campaign centred on the mailing of free installation disks and no-cost 30 day trials, AOL was became the first online experience for much of the world. Before long the company was the biggest name on the web and a hot commodity in the business world.

In 2000 AOL announced that it would be merging with Time Warner. The deal was among the largest ever and is widely considered to mark the high point of the dot-com boom.

In the meantime, however, serious cracks were emerging in AOL's internet façade. The walled garden approach of the company's ISP structure was falling out of favour with an increasingly sophisticated consumer crowd, and the company was behind competing telco and cable operators on its broadband offerings. Before long, AOL's huge customer base eroded and the company shrivelled into a small web content provider.

Iain Thomson: AOL was terrifically important in the growth of the internet but it lost its way very early.

In the start of the internet age AOL ruled the roost. You couldn't buy a magazine without getting an AOL disc thrown in free. The situation got so bad that one angry punter threatened to dump a million AOL CDs in front of the office headquarters.

Then came the merger with Time Warner. It's hard to describe the mania that accompanied the internet revolution unless you were there. Time Warner was desperate to get into the internet sphere. AOL had the majority of the internet market and so it looked like a good deal.

But AOL was based on dial-up technology and users who where clueless and non-commercial. Getting an email from a company with an AOL address in 2000 was a clear sign you were dealing with amateurs or a spammer.

Once the broadband market matured, AOL's customers realised that anyone could provide internet access and they didn't charge an arm and a leg for the privilege. AOL lost customers hand over fist and went into defensive mode to try and keep them. The software was incredibly difficult to remove, the marketing grew ever more pervasive but nothing helped.

If AOL had been smart it would have set up deals with the telecommunications companies to transfer their customer base to other ISPs. It didn't, and is now dying a slow death.

1. Palm

Iain Thomson: While it's heartbreaking to write, Palm really does deserve the top spot for taking a market and failing.

I'll be upfront; I really want Palm to succeed. I was an early adopter with the Palm systems which finally brought to life the possibility of handheld computing. It was the device techies wanted and if the company hadn't lost focus it would have been a giant in the field today.

But then the company lost its way. It ignored the mobile data market until too late and went through corporate restructuring by splitting off its software division from the hardware, a decision that made sense for certain executives but killed the company. Palm was successful due to its developer community and the company shrugged them off and reaped the whirlwind.

Sadly this hasn't changed. While the Palm Pre is a wonderful device, it was launched too soon and without proper developer support. I'm still considering buying one, but I suspect Palm is doomed by too many wrong decisions and by poor management.

Shaun Nichols: Even if the company does recover and thrive, I think Palm still gets the top spot because it had the industry so tightly by the throat and simply let the market pass them by.

Granted, hindsight is wonderful, but surely Palm had to see that mobile phones were becoming smaller and more powerful, while workers were becoming more mobile and dependant on portable systems. Combining the PDA and mobile phone must have seemed like a painfully obvious conclusion.

Imagine if Palm had in fact moved for the mobile market and sought to integrate phone capabilities into its products. The smartphone landscape would be dramatically different.