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Google, Apple and Cisco — They were among tech’s high-fliers of the past decade.

Why did some tech companies rocket during the past decade, 2000 through 2009, while others were beaten? The winners–Apple and Google for example — had the prescience to create new, lucrative sectors (digital media devices and services, Internet advertising, software-as-a-service). The less fortunate — AOL, Dell and Sun, for example — got sidetracked or guessed off beam on the most important trends.

Here’s our take on the decade’s winners and losers in technology.

The Winners:

Apple

It’s simple to fawn over Apple. Let’s not! Apple’s products aren’t inexpensive. Its human resources are cagey about forthcoming products. And Apple has done an awful job of communicating the health status of rock star Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who took a inexplicable six-month leave of nonappearance last January only to recur with a liver transplant in June. None of that, though actually matters. Over the past decade Apple’s stock has gone up more than 650%. Its staff head count increased to 32,000 last year from 8,568 in September of 2000. Apple regularly tops the PC group of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. As a final point Jobs’ absence demonstrated he has built a staff that can bring excellent results–if not detailed information about his health.

Cisco

No company had been tied to the riches of the online business more directly than Cisco. That meant a huge break down for the networking equipment company in the dot-com bust at the starting of the decade. But when the Internet turned out not to be a craze, Cisco and its skilled salesman of a CEO, John Chambers, were ready to ship trade and Internet service providers truckloads of high-margin routers and switches. Cisco has since turned into one of the most avid companies in tech, purchasing into every Internet-related area from cyber security to set-top boxes to videoconferencing.

Google

In its first full calendar decade, Google appeared from nearly nowhere to supremacy of the search advertising industry. That was the beginning — achievements like YouTube, Android and DoubleClick have taken the business into online video, cell phones and banner advertising. Google’s suite of office apps have, in three years, made annual sales of over $500 million, and bring a joint working style that may renovate the way corporations work.

Hewlett-Packard

Taking into account all the commotion around this firm, it is worth remembering that at the start of the decade HP was Silicon Valley’s giant also-ran. Today it is the world’s biggest tech company, with $118 billion in annual sales. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina’s tempestuous tenure — which incorporated embarrassed public battles with the founders’ children and an upsetting corporate spying scandal — severed HP from a storied and oppressive past, and through the achievement of Compaq, made it a leader in personal computers. Successor Mark Hurd, with the operational chops Fiorina lacked, has made HP a competitor in data center software, consulting and industrial printing.

Oracle

A decade ago, Oracle was acknowledged as a “relational database” software maker. Fast-forward to 2009: Larry Ellison’s corporation is gaining Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and plans to restructure itself as a “systems” firm to aim for its No. 1 contender IBM.

The Losers:

AOL

America Online was a dot-com era darling. It was leading all the curves, bringing one of the first e-mail services. But AOL’s affluence started heading south in 2000 when it gained media giant Time Warner — a deal now thought as one of the most horrible in corporate history. A host of troubles, together with a culture conflict between the two companies, a defective business plan and a secretarial scandal, led to the merger’s breakdown and nearly ruined AOL. In December, AOL split from Time Warner and is now attempting to renovate itself as a portal for Web content under the guidance of former Google sales chief Tim Armstrong.

Dell

Dell is a model of how quickly a firm can go from great to merely good. Much of the charge lies on Dell’s past accomplishment. A decade ago, the PC maker was way ahead of the shift to low-priced, commodity-based computing for the masses. Then, the world started to catch up. Mark Hurd made HP’s achievement of Compaq work, providing Dell a competitor with real scale in the industry of providing PCs and reasonably priced servers to businesses. Apple’s flamboyance for design, for the moment whittled away consumers with money to spend. As a final point, a shift to notebook computers from desktop PCs has hurt Dell where it has always performed well. The result: Dell’s shares have fallen approximately 70% over the past decade.

Sun

It was believed to become a great computer firm, to compete IBM. Sun, however it ended up being on the mistaken side of all the decade’s vital tech trends. Moore’s Law was making Intel chips the fastest on the planet, but Sun was having difficulties to its own domestic hardware. And the amalgamation of Microsoft’s Windows and the open source movement’s Linux eradicated whatever technical rewards were benefited by Sun’s own Solaris operating system. After years of losses, Sun was purchased by Oracle; it’s indistinguishable what of the company will survive.