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>> Sumi: Hello I'm Sumi Das for ZDNET, 2009 has almost come to an end and so it's the perfect time to recap the top five stories of the year. Joining me now to help us do just that is our senior editor, Sam Diaz. Sam, thanks for being with us.
>> Sam: Sure thank you for having me.
>> Sumi: Okay so a year ago things looked very different for two companies, Yahoo and Microsoft. Their futures were really uncertain, things have changed a lot in the last year.
>> Sam: That's right.
>> Sumi: And that's number one on our list, the Carol Bartz era of Yahoo.
>> Sam: That's right Carol Bartz the new CEO came in, in January and I actually wrote a post at the time that said there's a new sheriff in town, she was a little bit feisty, no nonsense came in.
>> Sumi: Right.
>> Sam: Did some house cleaning.
>> Sumi: Had an agenda.
>> Sam: That's right, absolutely she had a plan, she came in and you know she got to know the company but then she started to turn things around, she came out really strong somewhere after the mid year and said basically we are not Google, quit comparing us to Google. People go to Google to search and then they go off to the next site, people come to Yahoo and they check their mail, and they check their headlines and they check their stock quote and so on.
>> Sumi: You know I think people do that at Google too.
>> Sam: Well, I mean...
>> Sumi: G-mail, a little known program named g-mail.
>> Sam: That's right but Carol...I mean basically wanted to say we are not Google, quit comparing us and I think she was pretty effective at saying that, launched a big marketing campaign, it's all about you and really working hard to change the image of Yahoo. Now most importantly she was able to do what the big debate was in 2008, she cut a search deal with Microsoft.
>> Sumi: The on again, off again deal.
>> Sam: Absolutely but she was able to pull that off, they're still hammering out the fine details of it but you know we're going to see that deal happen and that was really the big deal for Yahoo.
>> Sumi: That dovetails nicely into number 2 on our list, Microsoft had two major announcements this year, Bing and Windows 7, two major product releases.
>> Sam: That's right so Bing, the new search engine came out and it really tried to differentiate itself from sort of what you get on Google, so you look at Google and you get a lot of search results, Bing came out and sort of categorized those results, you have things like images and if you're searching by a person's name, their biography, you know sort of their events and their importance out there so I mean when you look at sort of the results of Bing that's really the differentiator. Now Windows 7 of course, let's put Windows Vista behind us for...
>> Sumi: I think everybody's happy to do that.
>> Sam: That's right Windows Vista is done, it's in the history books, we're not looking back any more, Windows 7 is out the early reviews are very strong, there's a lot of pent up demand, signs point to some consumer movement over the holiday season but rally what we're looking at is some corporate spending in 2010. A big year for Microsoft and you know as things their Office Live apps sort of roll out, more competitive with Google out there too.
>> Sumi: And number 3 on our list is Google because Google introduced Android and this is their mobile OS.
>> Sam: That's right, that's right so they're making a be push into phones, early on in the year you sort of only had a couple, you had the G1 that came out earlier in the year and the My Touch, those were exclusive to G mobile.
>> Sumi: Not a big splash actually.
>> Sam: No not a big splash but now as we got into the second half of the year we have seen a lot of excitement around Android, Motorola basically said we're going to put all of our eggs into one basket and we're calling it Android, a big push, a big launch.
>> Sumi: The Droid.
>> Sam: The Droid. Absolutely the Droid came out in early November, the reviews are pretty strong on it and actually Verizon and Motorola came out and said that they're going to be the Iphone killer.
>> Sumi: They...Yeah they have a specific target in mind, don't they.
>> Sam: That's right they have these commercials you know I don't this, I don't do that and they were really mocking the Iphone and everything that I don't, Droid does and that's really been a big bill for them to sort of go after that Iphone, I mean Apple and the Iphone has always been sort of the big gang out there for smart phones, Droid is coming in and really giving it some competition.
>> Sumi: That brings us to number 4 on our list, Apple. But Apple didn't have really any major product announcements this year, they had some upgrades but the bigger story coming out of Apple was really centered around Steve Jobs.
>> Sam: That's right as you recall Steve Jobs went on a medical leave of absence, he had been sick for a while back in January right before Mac World, he said he was...
>> Sumi: Their last Mac World.
>> Sam: That's right their last Mac World inaudible but around that time he said that he was going to go on six month medical leave of absence and sort of just fell off the radar, well later we found out that he had had a liver transplant during that time.
>> Sumi: He was pretty seriously sick.
>> Sam: It was a very serious situation but more importantly it sparked this very big debate out on the internet and sort of all over the place, what's more important, the right to privacy, so you take Steve Jobs, he is an individual and he has a medical condition and he should be able to have some privacy there.
>> Sumi: He has HPPA rights too.
>> Sam: But at the same time he's a CEO of a major company, he's the face of it and share holders do they have the right to know what's going on with his condition.
>> Sumi: Okay, so that's four out of five, what is number five on our list?
>> Sam: Well, you know...
>> Sumi: The suspense is killing me.
>> Sam: Well you know I had a tough time trying to figure this one out. You had a lot of big things going on this year, you had Oracle made it's bid for Sun, you had Cisco step up it's game and spark a data center war out there, you had of course Sales Force and its big push into Cloud Computing, VM Ware and all the talk about virtualization, but I have to say the big story that sort of stuck out for me was this new debate, or this renewed debate I guess I should say over net neutrality.
>> Sumi: Because that debate had really stalled for a while.
>> Sam: Yeah that's right it rally had stalled and the Obama administration came into to Washington and they really put this back on the front burner for the FCC. Now it sparked this debate between what's a web service and what's sort of a telecommunication service. If you take companies like ATT, Comcast, people that provide the access to the internet they don't want to just be the dumb pipeline into the internet, they want to have some say about how those services are used, maybe even you know some different ways to monitor traffic through there, web services while they want to come in and just say we're entitled to come in and use the internet and that's what we want to do. ATT actually sparked this debate over what the web service versus the telecommunication company, Google voice is out there, are they telecommunication or are they web, the FCC has got some decisions to make and I think we're going to see quite a bit more debate about this in 2010.
>> Sumi: Yeah, this will be a story that develops into the next year.
>> Sam: Absolutely.
>> Sumi: And possibly even beyond.
>> Sam: That's right.
>> Sumi: And possibly even beyond. You'll keep and eye on it for us I'm sure.
>> Sam: I will.
>> Sumi: Sam thanks so much for recapping 2009 for us.
>> Sam: Sure.
>> Sumi: For more year end coverage go to blogszdnet.com.
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