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This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007 feature. The voting has now closed and readers have chosen ExxonMobil as the most hated company of the year. Be sure to let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

Trying to discuss the Most Hated Companies is not easy. There are so many to choose from that if we left the subject wide open it would fill a novel. The four companies that made our list are all substantial in size and that alone brings much criticism. These four companies and their stocks are all broadly covered by Wall Street and business journals everywhere. We at BloggingStocks have written dozens of stories about them in just the past year alone. Each time we do, we find that our readers have plenty to vent about, so here we are giving you all one more chance.

Three of the four stocks here have not paid off for shareholders, and that is bound to start the ranting and raving. All of them have created some consumer backlash, and even fury. Some people hate the management. But management hating is not the problem at the worlds largest company, Exxon Mobil, since it is up about 200% in the past five years.