So after having a discussion on companies that shaped the Web as we see it today with Ankesh Kothari . I decided it will rather be better to write list of the companies I think shaped up the virtual world in a post.

1. Google - Enough has been said and enough will be said. They are number 1 (for some time now) and will be number 1 (for some time more at least).

2. Hotmail - Fast communication is much more important than search of information IMHO. Hotmail made it possible to have fast asynchronous communication. Totally changed our lives.

3. ICQ - Made is possible to meet new people on Internet. Find people with similar interests. Have a real time messaging with people staying apart. Now world with out IM is boring.

4. Skype - Whoa 3 out of top 4 are related to communication. Thats how much I care about communication and any innovation which helps us in communicating with people we care about. I remember I used to be in a Skype conference call for 8 hours per day when I was working in Yagna! And these were free calls.  Amazingly useful service.

5. AOL - Again people at right time did the right thing in the very right way. Never used it much but stills deserves a place in top 5 for sure.

6. Amazon - From selling books online to cloud computing, who would have thought!

7. Wikipedia - I have not cleared dust of the encyclopedia my father bought for me when I was 12 in last 5 years. Power of Wikipedia + Google.

8. Yahoo! - Email, chat, search a portal with fun and color. I wish they dont die, but survive to be there in Web3.0/4.0/5.0 waves. Only if they stop creating new social networking application every couple of months I would put them in top 5.

9. Paypal - Yep, I thought long and hard for number 9 and 10. First 8 were natural and instantly identifiable. Paypal gave customers security to spend online. May not be rated as highly as services like Flickr, Youtube and other similar media content sharing apps but again IMHO one of the top 10 reasons.

10. Youtube/Flickr/Digg Combined. I really dont want this list to be more than 10, so awarding joint 10th position to these 3 sites. Note I am not much of a user of any of these and would love to include blogger instead of these sites. But popular opinion is youtube+flickr+digg better than blogger alone.

You have other list? Love to know about it.