The decade in tech: Top 5 stories of the '00s
From the Google IPO, to the rise of social networking, it's been an important decade for tech innovation, CBSNews.com Executive Editor Charles Cooper and I talk about the five most important tech events of the decade and what they mean for the technology industry going forward.
Financially, the decade ended up in the same place it started: The crapper. We started out with a dot-com bubble bursting and ended with a bigger downturn. In between there were a lot of interesting tech developments.
Thoughts on the countdown items in the video:
5. Software as a service emerged. At the start of the decade there were a few companies, like Salesforce.com, pitching this idea that you didn't have to buy software just rent it. Now Salesforce has more than $1 billion in revenue a year and you can get almost all of your enterprise apps on demand. It took a decade to get software as a service rolling, but the disruption is here to stay.
4. Social networking. At the beginning of the decade we actually used to talk to each other. We'd pick up the phone. We'd shake hands. Now we poke people on Facebook, send Tweets and network. It's hard to believe that social networking didn't even exist at the beginning of the decade. Now Facebook is used by 350 million people. It has been a game changer.
3. Larry Ellison is a genius. Ellison, the most entertaining of the tech CEOs, started the decade with one of his brash statements. In a nutshell, he said the software market is mature. I'm consolidating it. Back in 2003 we all scoffed. You can't buy PeopleSoft all the people will leave. You won't hold customers. Wrong. Ellison bought PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA and a now Sun. Anyone that competed with Ellison wound up working for him. The revenue tells that tale. For fiscal 2004, Oracle had revenue a little north of $10 billion. For fiscal 2009, Oracle had more than $23 billion in revenue.
2. The Apple renaissance. At the beginning of the decade Apple was just getting back on its feet. Then in October 2001, it cooked up a little device called the iPod and changed the music industry for ever. 220 million units later Apple is a juggernaut. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, then opened it up to developers and cooked up the App Store, which really changed everything and has 2 billion downloads. Now every wireless provider is trying to do something similar. Last quarter Apple sold more than 7 million iPhones and growth is accelerating.
1. Apple was big, but Google was bigger. In 2000, Google was just a search provider to Yahoo. Big mistake for Yahoo. From there world domination kicked off. In August of 2004, Google went public at $85 a share and proclaimed that its mission was not to be evil. And today? It has tentacles everywhere. Apps, cloud, search, display ads, smartphones. you name a category and Google is in it. It's kind of staggering. Clearly it was the decade of Google.