Computer history - 2000

Major computer events in 2000

Computers continue to work, and the world doesn't come to an end on January 1, 2000, as some feared might happen because of the year 2000 bug.

On March 10, 2000, NASDAQ hit its record high and marked the turning point of the dot-com boom.

For the first time, more than half of the households in America have Internet access on August 17, 2000, according to Nielsen.

Other computer events in 2000

A glitch in a computer in the Washington D.C. air traffic control causes a shutdown of air traffic across the U.S. East Coast on January 6, 2000.

Kevin Mitnick was released from prison on January 21, 2000.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act became effective on April 21, 2000.

Young Filipino students released the ILOVEYOU e-mail virus that began infecting computers and spreading over the Internet starting on May 4, 2000. The virus becomes one of the most costly viruses ever, estimated causing over 10 billion dollars in damage because of the steps involved in cleaning a computer after it had been infected.

On June 24, 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton made the first ever Presidential webcast. In it, he announced a USA.gov that citizens can use to search all government resources.

Internet Explorer 5.5 was released in July 2000.

The Nokia 3310 mobile phone was announced on September 1, 2000.

Steve Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.

Google launched Google AdWords with 350 customers in October 2000.

AGP 3.0 aka AGP 8x was introduced in November 2000.

Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko, and Sergei Krikalev become the first to enter the International Space Station on November 2, 2000.

ATA-5 is a standard approved by ANSI on December 13, 2000, under document NCITS 340-2000.

The site egghead.com announced on December 22, 2000, its site was hacked and that around 3.5 million customers credit cards were exposed.

U.S. Judge Thomas Penfield announced today after over 2-years in the court that Microsoft be split into two companies although it would remain intact until the appeals process is exhausted.

Both Intel and AMD pass the 1 GHz CPU barrier. Something many people in the computer industry thought would never happen.

The London Science Museum completed the difference engine No 2 printing mechanism in 2000.

Professor Paul Blenkhorn invents Microsoft Narrator.

Jack Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.

The JPEG 2000 wavelet compression codec standard is defined by the Joint Photographic Experts Group.

Google announced it had indexed over one billion pages making it the Internet's largest search engine.

The Low-Level Virtual Machine project began in 2000.

The last machine to run Multics was decommissioned in 2000.

New computer products and services introduced in 2000

XHTML was released on January 26, 2000.

EA released The Sims, the best-selling PC game in history on February 04, 2000.

CNR was introduced by Intel on February 07, 2000.

Microsoft Windows 2000 was released on February 17, 2000.

Perl 5.6 was released on March 22, 2000.

Sony released the PS2 on March 4, 2000.

Microsoft Pocket PC 2000 was introduced on April 19, 2000.

ATI introduced their Radeon product line on April 24, 2000.

Microsoft released Excel 2000 in 2000.

Microsoft released Excel 2000 for Mac in 2000.

Microsoft released Word 2001 for Mac in 2000.

Intel introduced the ATX 2.03 revision in May 2000.

AMD first released the Duron processor on June 19, 2000, with speeds of 600 MHz to 1.8 GHz and bus speeds of 200 MHz to 266 MHz. The Duron was built on the same K7 architecture as the Athlon processor.

Microsoft released Windows ME on June 19, 2000.

Sony released the PS One on July 7, 2000.

Microsoft introduced C# to the public in June 2000.

SQLite was released on August 17, 2000 by its developer, D. Richard Hipp.

Adobe Photoshop 6.0 was released in September 2000.

M-Systems announced the USB flash drives in September 2000 and were first sold to the public in December 2000 by IBM with a capability of 8 MB.

Intel introduced the short-lived Socket 423 in November 2000.

Microsoft release DirectX 8, November 9, 2000.

The Intel Pentium 4 central processing unit architecture (code-named "Willamette") was released on November 20, 2000.

Kondara Linux was released in 2000.

OpenOffice.org was introduced as an open office productivity suite in 2000.

Brute Force game was released in 2000.

Microsoft introduced Visio in 2000.

Seagate introduced a 15,000 RPM hard drive in 2000.

Internet domains that came online in 2000

The domain twitter.com came online on January 21, 2000.

The domain blogspot.com came online on July 31, 2000.

Computer companies founded in 2000

Asiliant Technologies was founded in January 2000.

Baidu was incorporated in January 2000.

Boost Mobile was founded in 2000.

DeviantArt came online in 2000 for sharing original artwork.

Sunbeamtech was founded in 2000.

Computer company events in 2000

AOL announced it had acquired Time Warner for $164 billion in stock and became AOL Time Warner on January 10, 2000.

Microsoft Bill Gates relinquished his title as CEO to Microsoft President Steve Ballmer on January 13, 2000.

ScanSoft acquired Caere Corp. on January 17, 2000.

Quintus Corporation and Mustang.com announced on February 28, 2000 that Quintus had agreed to acquire Mustang.com in a stock merger valued at approximately $290 million.

VeriSign agreed to acquire Network Solutions for $21 billion on March 7, 2000.

Efficient Networks, Inc. acquired NetScreen Technologies, Inc. for a $905 million stock transaction on March 28, 2000.

The SGI Cray research business unit was sold to Tera Computer company in March 2000.

Paradise Systems officially went out of business in March 2000.

Verizon was formed on April 4, 2000.

S3 Incorporated announced on April 11, 2000 it had signed into agreement to transfer it's graphics business to a newly established joint venture with VIA Technologies, Inc.

Microsoft Corporation announced on June 19, 2000, that it had bought Bungie Software Products Corporation for undisclosed terms. This move allows Microsoft to release the highly anticipated game Halo, for its upcoming Xbox.

Indeo was acquired from Intel by Ligos Technology on June 27, 2000.

Blizzard released Diablo II on June 29, 2000.

Sierra became part of Vivendi Universal in June 2000.

Number nine filed for bankruptcy on July 1, 2000, and no longer supports any products regardless of warranty status.

NEC and Mitsubishi launch new display monitor company on June 30, 2000, known as NEC/Mitsubishi.

Caldera International announced its agreement to acquire SCO's server software and professional services divisions on August 2, 2000.

Fountain Technologies that handles Quantex and CyberMax PC sales and support filed for US chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 17, 2000.

AT&T announced in October it would restructure over the next two years into a family of separate publicly held companies: AT&T Wireless, AT&T Broadband, and AT&T.

On November 1, 2000, S3 Incorporated and Diamond announced a name change to SONICblue.

NVIDIA Corporation announced on December 15, 2000 that it would acquire certain related assets of 3Dfx interactive.

Mattel sold The Learning Company to Gores Technology group for $3.6 billion in 2000.

EONtronics went out of business in 2000.

Integrated Micro Solutions went out of business in 2000.

Overland Data acquired Tecmar in 2000.

Red Hat purchased Cygwin in 2000.

SBC (Southwestern Bell Corporation) acquired Prodigy in 2000.

Segasoft was re-structured into Sega.com in 2000.

Silicom Multimedia went out of business in 2000.

SystemSoft's portfolio of Windows Utilities software solutions were acquired by Rocket Software in 2000.

TurboSquid was founded in 2000 by Tom and David Avgikos and Matt and Andy Wisdom.

Zoom Telephonics, Inc. acquired the Boca Research brand and trademark rights in 2000.

Computer-related movies released in 2000

Track Down (Takedown outside the USA) was released on March 15, 2000.

Computer pioneer deaths in 2000

Phillip Katz passed away on April 14, 2000 (Age: 37).

Donald Davies passed away on May 28, 2000 (Age: 76).

Leo Fantl passed away on November 11, 2000 (Age: 76).

Michael Muuss passed away on November 20, 2000 (Age: 42).