I think it is very safe to say their failures had little to do with not appreciating the Internet or not understanding distributed computing. You might note that a LOT of companies that didn't survive that era actually understood both very well, and yet failed nonetheless. In a lot of cases you can point to startups these days that essentially retrieved those ideas from that era and reintroduced them to a world that had caught up with where they were at.

Sun moved in to this stuff. They understood it. They just weren't successful at figuring out how to run a business with it.

Technologists certainly tend to seek solutions, and find blame in technology or the application of it. Getting technology right is necessary, but not sufficient.

In the end, the world is much bigger than the tech we build & consume.