There were a number of ring-based technologies such as Cambridge Ring that even predate Ethernet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Ring_(computer_netwo...

The main reason Ethernet won, I think, is that it was really easy to deploy incrementally. It was much more plug-and-play than anything else at the time.

My memory is that every ring topology had pretty nasty failure characteristics around "a single misbehaving/failing client."

Which Ethernet has too, but can generally tolerate a much higher level of imperfect reality, while still providing degraded service.

Before you could get plentiful high-quality NICs and cabling, graceful degradation was a killer feature.