Top 10 technology tussles

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Anthropologists tell us about the olden days, when (predominantly) men stood with spears and threatened each other. Over the years we've moved on: using swords, then guns, then nuclear weapons before finding the ultimate weapon lawyers.

The technology industry, being so new, has resorted to legal battles more than most. However much as we'd like to see a cage fight between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs using chainsaws (two men enter, one man leaves) the fact remains that the technology industry has fought its battles in court, or in competition in the marketplace albeit with heavily stacked odds.

This week we've seen VMware declare war on Microsoft and Citrix over virtualisation. That battle is far from finishing but in its honour we've complied the best fights of the IT industry.

Battles are contentious by default, so if you think we've missed something let us know.

Honourable Mention: HP verses Dell

Honourable mention: Sendo verses Microsoft

10. Microsoft v Google

Shaun Nichols: Yet another recently-born rivalry, the battle between Google and Microsoft may well determine who becomes the alpha dog in tech for the coming decades.

Microsoft is the reigning king of computing. The software giant maintains a stranglehold on key areas such as operating systems, web browsing and software. Google, however, is the king of the internet. The smashing success of the flagship search engine has given Google a cash cow in the form of search advertising.

Now, as the internet increasingly becomes the basis for day-to-day computing activity the two companies, once thought to occupy different ends of the industry, find themselves on a collision course. Microsoft is eyeing a share of Google's lucrative online advertising business while Google is increasingly using its online applications to target Microsoft's stranglehold on the workplace utility and productivity market.

Iain Thomson: When a senior member of Microsoft announced he was leaving for Google Steve Ballmer (the Uncle Fester of the computing world) was reportedly so enraged he threw a chair across the room.

Now I can't blame Ballmer for that "smashing things is amazingly good therapy" but it shows how deep the rivalry is between these two companies. Microsoft has been the top dog for two decades and it'll give up that supremacy when you pry the keyboard from its cold, dead fingers.

Now you might think that Google has the upper hand in the fight. It has the search business in a lock, and has started giving away applications that Microsoft has used as a cash cow for free. But Google is the fresh-faced ingénue in the game, while a decade of fighting with governments have given Microsoft a vital advantage in the management arms race.

Microsoft is now gathering a force to slap down Google by any means possible. Microsoft may believe it has a lot in common with the Fellowship of the Ring but I suspect there's more of a touch of Sauron in its motives.

9. IBM verses CDC

8. MacOS verses Windows

7. Jobs verses Scully

6. SCO v Novell, IBM

5. IBM verses the regulators

4.Salesforce v Seibel

3 Commodore verses everyone else

2: Intel verses AMD

1: Microsoft v. Netscape

Shaun Nichols: Perhaps the most influential event of the last decade was Microsoft's landmark anti-trust case. Fallout from the case shook up 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 to get some of the pie. Having already accumulated a dominant position in the browser world and a huge software outfit, Microsoft decided that rather than compete head-to-head, it would simply leverage Windows.

While Netscape was a paid 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 realized 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 they planted the seed that lead to disaster for their 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 Firefox.

Iain Thomson: I think you're overestimating Microsoft here Shaun. 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 not only do over Netscape but to try and lock everyone using Windows into using IE. I was at a meeting with Microsoft public relations where the intention was clearly stated - "We need to f**k Netscape until they bleed". This was not a comment from a company in control of the situation.

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.

For the rest of the explanations see source.

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