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ExplainerYahoo closes GeoCities: how the web lost millions of home pagesYahoo bought GeoCities for billions in 1999 and switched it off a decade later. The closure became a turning point for web preservation.

ExplainerThe Storm worm: the botnet that started with a weather headlineIn January 2007 an email about deadly storms in Europe spread a Trojan that built one of the largest peer-to-peer botnets of its time.

ExplainerGPLv3: how the free software licence was rewrittenAfter 18 months of public drafting, the Free Software Foundation published version 3 of the GNU General Public License in June 2007.

ExplainerThe UK identity card scheme: from Act of Parliament to shredded registerBritain legislated for national ID cards backed by a central biometric register, then abolished the whole scheme within five years.

ExplainerThe netbook era: small, cheap laptops that briefly drove PC growthThe Asus Eee PC started a boom in low-cost mini laptops that propped up PC sales, until tablets and thinner laptops took their place.

ExplainerThe 2008 MacBook Air: the laptop pulled from an envelopeSteve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air at Macworld in January 2008. Its compromises looked radical then and became normal for laptops.

ExplainerThe Anna Kournikova worm: a toolkit, a tennis star and a global outbreakIn February 2001 an email promising a photo of the tennis player spread worldwide. It was built with a point-and-click virus generator.

ExplainerHow PDF became an international standardAdobe handed control of PDF 1.7 to ISO, turning a proprietary format into ISO 32000-1 in 2008.

ExplainerWikipedia locks the doors: vandalism and the end of fully open editingAfter a false biography made headlines in late 2005, Wikipedia restricted new article creation and introduced semi-protection.

ExplainerWhen Bill Gates told people to buy CDs: Microsoft and the DRM debateIn December 2006 Bill Gates said digital rights management caused too much pain for honest buyers, at a time when Microsoft was selling DRM technology.

ExplainerFirefox’s rise: how a non-profit browser took on Internet ExplorerFirefox launched in 2004 and within five years had grown into a browser used by hundreds of millions, reopening the browser market.

ExplainerMicrosoft vs Linux: from “cancer” to Linux Foundation memberFor a decade Microsoft treated Linux as its biggest threat, with leaked memos, cost studies and patent claims. Linux supporters answered every round, and in the end Microsoft joined them.

ExplainerBill Gates steps back: how Microsoft handed over from its founderBill Gates gave up the chief executive job in 2000 and stopped working full-time at Microsoft in 2008. The eight years between were a long, staged handover through antitrust cases and a changing industry.

ExplainerOpenOffice.org: the free office suite that challenged Microsoft OfficeSun Microsystems bought StarOffice, released its code as OpenOffice.org and gave the world a free alternative to Microsoft Office, then lost it to a fork after Oracle took over.

ExplainerDell in the 2000s: the direct-sales giant that had to changeDell built the world’s biggest PC business by selling straight to customers. In the mid-2000s, customer-service anger, a battery recall, criticism of its advertising and a resurgent HP forced it to rethink.

ExplainerPsion: the British pocket computer pioneer behind SymbianPsion made some of the best handheld computers of the 1990s, then helped create Symbian, the operating system that ran most of the world’s smartphones before the iPhone.

ExplainerThe 2005 Sidekick hack: a celebrity phone breach and online account securityIn February 2005 the address book and notes from Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile Sidekick appeared online. The breach showed how weak account recovery could expose data synced to the cloud.

ExplainerPalmSource and the Linux Palm OS that never quite arrivedIn 2004 the maker of Palm OS promised to rebuild it on Linux for phones. Ownership changes, few devices and the iPhone overtook the plan, and Palm went its own way with webOS.

ExplainerNeXT: the computer that was cool but not enough, and the comeback it made possibleAfter leaving Apple, Steve Jobs built NeXT. Its black cube sold poorly, but its software ran the first web browser and became the basis of macOS and iOS.

ExplainerMobile phones and the vanishing bees: how a scare story was clearedIn 2007 a newspaper report suggested mobile phone signals might be behind the mysterious loss of honeybee colonies. The researchers it cited disagreed, and later science pointed to other causes.

TopicSecurityWorms, botnets, phishing, DRM fights and the people who chased them.

TopicOpen sourceLinux, licences and the long argument about who owns software.

TopicBrowsersFrom Internet Explorer’s dominance to Firefox and the second browser war.

TopicMicrosoftWindows, Office, antitrust and the company’s changing view of the web.

TopicAppleThe Mac’s comeback, the iPod years and the hardware that set trends.

TopicGoogle & the webSearch, portals, Web 2.0 and the services that came and went.

TopicMobilePhones, networks and the health and privacy scares that followed them.

TopicHardwareLaptops, netbooks, chips and the reviews that tracked them.

TopicGreen ITEnergy use, recycling rules and greener devices.

TopicUK government ITLarge public-sector IT projects, identity cards and digital policy.

TopicSoftwareFile formats, utilities and the downloads people relied on.

TopicEnterprise ITServers, outsourcing, storage and how businesses bought technology.

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