Top 10 Tech stories 2014: Backlash! Disrupting the disruptors

Blowing up entrenched business models and picking up the profits that spill onto the floor is a time-honored tradition in tech, these days known by the cliche of the moment, "disruption.

This year everyone was trying to push back against those upstarts, whether by buying them like Facebook did, reorganizing to compete with them like Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have done, or just plain going out against them guns blazing, as it seemed that every city and taxi company did with Uber.

European courts fought the disruptive effect Google search has had on our very sense of the historical record. But meanwhile, legions of net neutrality supporters in the U.S. spoke up to save the Internet's core value of disruption against the oligopoly of a handful of communications carriers.

Here are our picks for the top stories of a very, well, disruptive year.

Nadella aims Microsoft toward relevancy in a post-

HP says breaking up is hard, but necessary

Uber's bumpy ride shakes up the "sharing" economy

Facebook gambles $16B on WhatsApp

Mt Gox implodes, deflating Bitcoin hype

Apple Pay starts to remake mobile payments

Alibaba's IPO marks a new era for Chinese brands

Regin and the continuing saga of the surveillance state

EU 'right to be forgotten' ruling challenges Google to edit history

Obama weighs in as FCC goes back to the drawing boards on net neutrality

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