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RapidShare was the file locker of the late 2000s: paste a link, wait through a countdown, download one file at a time unless you paid for premium. In 2010 it was still among the most-visited sites on...
File lockers, 72-minute limits and pirated TV
Megaupload and its video arm Megavideo were among the busiest sites on the internet in 2010, hosting everything from legitimate file transfers to full seasons of pirated television. Free viewers hit...
Servers somewhere else; the 2010 buzzword for storing files and running software online.
the cloud: Servers somewhere else; the 2010 buzzword for storing files and running software online. Example: "it's all in the cloud now"
The P2P client a court shut down in October 2010
LimeWire was the file-sharing program of a generation: a green-and-grey Gnutella client full of misnamed MP3s, fake files and viruses. On 26 October 2010 a federal court injunction forced it to stop...
OK, thanks, bye; a curt lolspeak sign-off.
kthxbai: OK, thanks, bye; a curt lolspeak sign-off. Example: "send me the file kthxbai"
A magic folder that synced, 2 GB free
Dropbox gave you a folder that synced across your computers and phone, with 2 GB free and more if you referred friends. In 2010 it was the way students moved essays between the library computer and...
Word processing in the browser, shared with a link
Google Docs let students write group projects in the same document at the same time, which felt like magic in 2010. In January it began storing any file type, and in April it gained a rewritten...
The Ribbon everywhere, and Office Web Apps in the browser
Office 2010, released to consumers on 15 June 2010, put the Ribbon interface in every application, added the Backstage file view, and launched free Office Web Apps that ran Word, Excel and PowerPoint...
Ripping CDs, LimeWire folders, mislabelled tracks and the 4 GB iPod
In 2010 music was files: ripped from CDs, downloaded from LimeWire or torrents, bought from iTunes, traded on USB sticks, and organised (badly) in iTunes or Winamp. A library of 5,000 tracks with...
The torrent tracker that would not die
The Pirate Bay was the world's best-known BitTorrent index in 2010, a year after its founders were convicted in Sweden. Its pirate-ship logo, comment threads and "legal threats" page made it a symbol...
Skype's founders try music streaming in America
Rdio, from Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, launched in the US and Canada in August 2010 as a subscription streaming service with a social feed of what friends were playing. It beat...
Buddy lists and away messages, fading fast
AIM had defined instant messaging in America for a decade, with its running-man icon, buddy lists, door-opening sounds and passive-aggressive away messages. By 2010 it was losing users to Facebook...
Nudges, winks and display names full of lyrics
Still called MSN by almost everyone, Windows Live Messenger was the dominant instant messenger outside the United States in 2010, with hundreds of millions of users. Its 2011 version, released in...
Sneakernet in your pocket
In 2010 a 4 or 8 GB USB stick was how files moved between school, home and the print shop, before cloud sync was universal. Drives came free on lanyards at conferences, got lost constantly, and...
Oracle filed a patent and copyright lawsuit over Android's use of Java APIs, beginning a case that reached the US Supreme Court in 2021.
Verified Supported Editorial Labels show how well each record is documented; open any result for its sources.
A permanent injunction won by the record labels forced LimeWire to disable its file-sharing software, ending the most popular P2P client of the MP3 era.
The daily-deals company walked away from what would have been Google's largest acquisition and filed for its own IPO the following year.
