"Three years on, the damage is still being felt - indeed, some experts believe the technology industry will take decades to recover from the shock. The consultant Allan Tumolillo, of Probe Research, thinks that in two years' time, the industry will still be behind where it would have been without the bubble.

'No one wants to invest in technology so companies can only survive if they already have an entrenched, established business,' he says. 'The pace of change is going to be very slow.'

Brian Ashford-Russell, who runs the Polar capital technology fund, agrees. Companies, he said, have become cowards - they will not buy anything from a small firm, they want to be convinced that it will be there for the long-term.

That may be a wise precaution - and it is certainly preferable to the frenzy of ill-judged spending on companies and products with a shelf-life of months - but it stifles innovation. "

I wonder if this is true in all cases. If indeed, nobody will spend with a small firm.

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Other title(s) for this story: The Observer: Three years that shook the world (the dot com bubble)