Top 10 technology also-rans

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 a commercial internet service. When the browser developed and the World Wide Web formed in the 1990s, America Online was in a prime position to take advantage of the market, and it did so 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 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 merge with Time Warner. The deal was among the largest ever and is widely considered to mark the high point of the dotcom 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, 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.

At the start of the internet age AOL ruled the roost. You couldn't buy a dead tree magazine without getting an AOL disc thrown in free, it seemed. The situation got so bad that one angry punter threatened to dump a million AOL CDs in front of the company's 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 aimed at users who were clueless and non-commercial. Getting an email from a company with an AOL address in 2000 was a clear sign that you were dealing with amateurs or a spammer.

Once the broadband market matured, AOL's customers realised that any company could provide internet access and 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 and the marketing grew ever more pervasive, but nothing helped.

If AOL had been smart it would have set up deals with the telecoms companies to transfer its 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 it 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 it by.

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, 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 seems 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.