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Websites, products, technology, people, media, games, memes, slang and timeline events, all with sources.
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...
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...
Wait 60 seconds, then download
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...
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...
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"
viral: Spreading rapidly by sharing; "going viral" was the ambition of every 2010 video, ad and blog post. Example: "the Old Spice ad went viral overnight"
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...
OK, thanks, bye; a curt lolspeak sign-off.
kthxbai: OK, thanks, bye; a curt lolspeak sign-off. Example: "send me the file kthxbai"
140 characters and the Fail Whale
Twitter turned four in 2010 and became the internet's newswire. Users sent about 50 million tweets a day in February and roughly 90 million a day by September, the Library of Congress agreed to...
Square photos, filters, iPhone only
Instagram launched on 6 October 2010 as an iPhone-only app for square photos with retro filters and reached a million users by December. Its filters, such as X-Pro II, Lomo-fi and Earlybird, made...
Free calls over the internet, video included
Skype was how families called abroad and how long-distance couples saw each other in 2010. It reported more than 500 million registered users, offered free Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls, and...
Every blog you followed, in one inbox
Google Reader was the RSS reader of choice for anyone who followed many blogs, with keyboard shortcuts, folders, and a Share button that made it a small social network of its own. In 2010 it was at...
Flash games with achievements, bought by GameStop
Kongregate hosted thousands of free browser games with badges, chat rooms beside every game and a levelling system for players. GameStop bought it in July 2010, betting that browser games were the...
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...
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...
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.
Verified Supported Editorial Labels show how well each record is documented; open any result for its sources.
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.
The daily-deals company walked away from what would have been Google's largest acquisition and filed for its own IPO the following year.
