Top 10 technology tussles

2. Intel versus AMD
Iain Thomson: I'm going to have to be very careful what I write here because there is an ongoing anti-competition case going on in the EU and US at the moment on just this issue.

Intel was the first modern chip company. Born out of an alliance of interested parties at Fairchild Semiconductors, Intel has gone on to be the biggest chip company in the world and has an annual turnover larger than several small countries.

AMD was also started by refugees from Fairchild and initially worked quite well with Intel. Indeed, it could be said that Intel's success with IBM was due to competition with AMD, since IBM was required to have two chip suppliers.

But then in 1986 Intel started to play rough and cut off support for AMD by denying it access to the chip designs it needed. After eight years in the courts Intel had to pay damages, but the ill feeling persists to this day. Intel has fired more legal challenges at AMD, most of which have been beaten off at huge expense. Now AMD is fighting back.

AMD has been preparing its revenge and has a compelling case; the company has been significantly ahead of Intel in the technology sphere for some time, yet this hasn't translated into orders. AMD, by all accounts, alleges that this is because Intel has had agreements with OEMs to ignore AMD's processors in favour of Intel's, in return for large discounts on volume chip supplies.

It's up to the courts to see whether these claims are true. What is clear is that the EU and the US, as well as Japan and Korea, are taking this seriously and in some cases have come down on AMD's side.

The current round of investigations will take years to complete and, if Microsoft's experience with the EU is anything to go by, will take years more of appeals, and the resultant fines won't hurt too much, since that would stifle the 'free market'.

Shaun Nichols: Depending on who you ask, the spat between Intel and AMD these days is either the result of dirty tricks or sour grapes. AMD claims that Intel bribed and threatened PC and server vendors to go with its own chips, while Intel claims that AMD is just upset because it simply could not keep up in key areas of processor development.

Regardless of the claims being made today, the war between Intel and AMD paid huge dividends to consumers. When Intel saw its development stall, AMD was there to take advantage and the market responded. This in turn pushed Intel to step up its own game. Over the past two decades, both companies have been playing what some analysts liken to a game of leapfrog in which each company briefly jumps ahead of its rival.

These days Intel is ahead in the market and AMD is still dogged by financial problems. Hopefully the company can recover, because the back-and-forth between the two sides has been a boon to the rest of the industry.

1. Microsoft versus Netscape
Shaun Nichols: Perhaps the most influential event of the past decade was Microsoft's landmark anti-trust case. Fallout from the case shook the entire market and forced the largest software vendor in the world to radically alter its approach to the market. And it all started with one showdown.

In the late 1990s the internet was coming of age. As users ventured out of the walled-garden ISP experience and into the larger internet, the web browser market boomed and Netscape was the reigning king.

Seeing this boom in browsing, Microsoft wanted some of the pie. Having already accumulated a dominant position in the operating system world and a huge software applications outfit, Microsoft decided that, rather than compete head-to-head, it would simply leverage Windows.

While Netscape was a paid-for application that had to purchased in a store or downloaded online, Microsoft decided to bundle its Internet Explorer application as a free component of Windows. Not only did users not have to obtain and install a separate browser, they could get it for free.

As one would expect, users flocked to Internet Explorer and Netscape was devastated. The company soon had to shut down, but not before filing what would become a landmark lawsuit. As the case dragged on, authorities realised that Microsoft was using the dominance of Windows to muscle other companies out of the market.

Netscape may not have won the browser war, but it planted the seed that led to disaster for its rival. Ironically, Microsoft later found itself battling for browser supremacy when the remnants of Netscape Navigator were turned over to the open-source world and used as the foundation for Mozilla's Firefox.

Iain Thomson: I think you're overestimating Microsoft here Shaun. Bill Gates wrote off the internet in 1993 as the computer equivalent of CB radio, then tried to catch up fast.

In doing so I think Gates panicked. He saw he'd missed the boat on the biggest thing in computing so used Internet Explorer to do over Netscape and try and lock everyone using Windows into using IE.

Once Microsoft dominated the browser market, development stopped until Mozilla used the Netscape engine to build a better browser and Microsoft was forced to play catchup again. We lost nearly a decade of browser development because Redmond got its monopoly.

Ultimately Microsoft paid heavily for the price of winning the browser wars. While getting off lightly in the US under Bush's regime the EU stepped up and did its job. Microsoft is still paying the price for its actions, and it owes us.