The companies I mentioned are not startups, nor are they dead. They were among the tiny percentage of startups that were wildly successful. Now they are mature, public companies that have either plateaued or started to slowly decline. But they will still be profitable for many years, and they should return those profits to the shareholders. That they are are not doing so is historically unprecedented.

Other mature tech companies not paying dividends include Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, Cisco, EA, Activision, Intuit, Oracle, Symantec, Amazon, and Ebay. And the few that do pay dividends (IBM, HP, and Microsoft for instance) have a very low dividend yields. It seems to me that there has been a breakdown of corporate governance.

I can't find examples of companies going through voluntary liquidation (what Michael Dell recommended Apple do in 1997). It's hard to find tech companies that pay dividends.

Adobe, for instance, is in the perfect position to pay dividends. It is a group of cash cows that might suddenly get destroyed by new market entrants. They're putting the money in a vault [1], but they're not paying dividends [2].

The problem, as I see it, is that companies refuse to admit they're dying. It's the weirdest thing.

[1] http://finance.google.com/finance?q=adbe [2] http://sec.edgar-online.com/2008/04/04/0001047469-08-004108/...