Top 10 technology marriages made in hell

Last Friday the news was all about fairy tales, as Kate (or Catherine as protocol seems to have it now) and her prince went down the aisle. In the spirit of the occasion we looked at the best marriages in IT, but now it's time to look at the other side of the equation.

For all the great marriages there are always a few that end up going sour. This is true in the technology industry, as it is everywhere else, so we're going to look at the marriages and relationships the industry has brought together that really shouldn't have happened.

Some of these are full mergers, some working relationships that didn't. One or two we've even pinned onto individuals, rightly or wrongly. Whatever the cause the outcomes weren't good, or are looking like they won't be.

Honourable Mention: Symbian
Iain Thomson: This was a great pity, but a classic example of why multi-partner relationships have a short lifespan.

Symbian started off in 1998 as a collaborative effort between Nokia, Motorola, Psion and Sony Ericsson. Nokia chucked in most of the money, Psion its operating system, and some of the biggest names in telecoms have owned a slice of the organisation over the years.

The collaboration produced the operating system behind some of the most iconic phones of the early 21st century, and came to dominate the world of telecoms.

Companies came and went, but the base operating system with agreed standards gave manufacturers the security to speculate on innovative designs and they came up with some crackers.

But problems arose as time went on. The group ignored the advances being made in smartphone operating systems, and rested on its laurels. Gradually the fire went out of the relationship and Nokia started to dominate. In 2008, the company bought the others out.

Three years down the line and it's all in ruins. Symbian's numbers are in a precipitous decline, development has stopped and Nokia has been forced into a partnership with Microsoft in order to survive, and even that is not certain. A sad end indeed.

Shaun Nichols: The one thing about open source platforms is that they require a great deal of time and emotional investment. Companies have to truly buy into the ideal of open source software if they are to invest the necessary resources to turn a platform into a successful business.

With Nokia, I don't think the desire was really there. The company made its fortune selling hardware, and the Symbian partnership was made at a time when each vendor had to have their own operating system.

When Android was released, that perception was changed. Suddenly, there were software platforms out there which could be used by multiple vendors and, rather than spend money on software development, handset vendors could go back to putting their resources into hardware.

Nokia eventually settled on Windows Phone over Android, but I think Symbian's fate was sealed when Google unveiled its smartphone platform.

Honourable Mention: Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld
Shaun Nichols: Jerry Seinfeld built a vast fortune on his "show about nothing", and many people anticipated a classic marketing campaign when Microsoft landed the comedian to star in a line of commercials for Windows Vista.

But, as it turns out, a "commercial about nothing" was nowhere near as entertaining as the "show about nothing". Viewers were left wondering why Seinfeld and the richest man on the planet were buying shoes and moving in with families, and what exactly it had to do with improving personal computers.

Not helping matters was the epic flop of Vista. The bizarre marketing campaign became associated with the buggy software, and the Seinfeld commercials were abruptly discontinued.

Iain Thomson: Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, but I really don't get Jerry Seinfeld. Millions of people find him funny, however, and Microsoft wanted some of that to try and drum up interest in Vista.

Frankly, you could have brought the god of comedy down to Earth and it couldn't have resuscitated that piece of bloatware, and Seinfeld had little chance.

Part of the problem was that Apple was running a highly successful advertising campaign looking to win over PC users to the coolest platform on the planet. The campaign was a stroke of genius, and was repeated around the world.

I doubt it won over many chief executives, because it wasn't designed to, but it killed Vista in the student and youth markets.

What really crippled Microsoft's advertising campaign, however, was the inclusion of Bill Gates. Now, Bill is many things - hard working, business savvy, a good mid-range programmer - but a comedian he is not. The adverts were fist-bitingly bad, and the company pulled them fast.