2014 Tech History in Review Timeline
Jan-March | April-June | July-Sept | Oct-Dec
July
July 2 – Lindsay Lohan sued Take-Two for using her likeness in Grand Theft Auto 5. The character “Lacey Jonas” is too similar to her.
Amazon sued Zoltan Szabadi because he left Amazon to work at Google. Amazon has a non-compete, trade secret restriction clause in their employment contract.
July 8 – Apple drops Google Maps from the “Find my iPhone” app in favor for their own mapping service
July 9 – ex-Ford CEO Alan Mulally joins the Google board of directors audit committee
July 14 – LinkedIn acquired Newle for an undisclosed sum
July 16 – Google+ relaxed their real-name restriction on the social network
July 18 – Apple board member Bill Campbell retired. He was on the board for 17 years – longer than any other member.
July 21 – Netflix hits 50 million users.
July 25 – Bose sued Beats over noise cancelling technologies that infringe on Bose patents
July 26 – Apple acquired BookLamp for an undisclosed sum. BookLamp is a book service that allows you to read and get the next book via “station” – similar to what Pandora does with music
July 30 – Google adds new features to Hangouts Video chat software. Users don’t need a Google+ account, and can do a 15 participant hangout from a Chromebox
Apple acquires Swell for $30 million, then shuts it down
August
August 1 – Microsoft launched the Surface Pro 3 in Core i3 and i7 versions. Price: $799 (i3 64GB) or $1,549 (i7 256 GB) and $1,949 (i7 512GB)
August 4 – The U.S. Labor Department found that LinkedIn was in violation of fair labor standards and ordered to pay $6 million of overtime to employees in 5 states.
August 5 – Sprint has backed out of the T-Mobile merger. Further, CEO Dan Heese was fired and replaced with Marcelo Claure
Online streaming website Justin.TV shuts down to focus on TWITCH
August 7 – YouTube acquires video-editing app Directr for an undisclosed sum
Google changed the search algorithm to give any secure website higher rankings
IBM unveiled the SyNapse chip, which uses neurons and synapses to compute, similar to the human brain.
August 11 – Google joins with China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, KDDi, SingTel and Global Transit to build a new Trans-Pacific cable system. This $300 million project is codename “Faster”
AT&T rolls out gigabit Internet to Austin TX
August 12 – University of Tokyo and Keio University create a camera that can take photos at 4.4 trillion frames per second. The photos are only .2 MP and 450-450 resolution
August 13 – Anonymous group called OpFerguson released audio tapes related to the Michael Brown shooting
In a Wired interview, Edward Snowden lined out “MonsterMind” – a system that could identify traffic patterns of cyber attacks.
August 14 – Ask.com acquires Ask.fm for an undisclosed sum
Apple announced they will be remove benzene and n-hexane from the 22 factories that make iPhones.
August 18 – Facebook adds ‘Sattire’ tag to any fake news stories
Podcaster Adam Carolla settled a lawsuit against Patent Troll Personal Audio for undisclosed terms.
August 19 – Steve Ballmer officially stepped down from the board of directors
August 22 – University of Michigan research team published a paper titled “Green Lights Forever” which outlined how hackers could take over traffic infrastructure
August 25 – Amazon acquired TWITCH video game streaming service for $970 million
August 26 – Google acquired Zync for an undisclosed sum. Zync produces visual effects technology behind movies such as Star Trek
Verizon launched HD calls with VoLTE
August 27 – HP recalls millions of AC adapters that have a fire risk. Cords with LS-15 are being recalled.
August 28 – Apple patented their Fifth avenue Glass cube store
August 29 – Intel unveiled the Core i7-5960X processor. This is the first 8-core desktop processor for gamers and content creators and will support DDR4 memory along with 16 computing threads. Price $389 – $999
September
September 1 – A hacker dropped dozens of nude images of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and more.
September 2 – Imagination Technologies unveiled the 64-bit MIPS CPU, dubbed i6400, or Warrior I.
AMD announced new desktop CPUs including the FX-8370E with a 3.3 GHz base clock ($199.99) and FX-8320E with a 3.2 GHz base clock ($146.99)
September 4 – nVidia sued Qualcomm and Samsung devices with Adreno, Mali or PowerVR graphics for they violate nVidia patents
Google announced they would refund $19 million to those customers whose children inadvertently made in-app purchases.
Megan Smith was named US CTO
September 5 – Motorola launched the Moto 360 – and Android based smartwatch for $250
September 9 – Apple announced the iPhone 6. A 4.7 inch display with the A8 processor – M8 co-processor. 1334×750 resolution. Price: Starting at $199 with 2 year contract [2]
Apple announced the iPhone 6+, with 5.5 inch display and A8-M8 combo and 1920×1080 resolution. An improved camera with 240 fps slow motion and optical stabilization. Price $299 with 2 year contract
Apple announced ApplePay, a tap-to-pay software solution to be used with the NFC chip in the iPhone 6-6+
Apple announced the AppleWatch, a 38 or 42mm face watch running a special version of iOS. The device will not be available until 2015
Apple and U2 gave away a whole album of music for free, which upset many users.
With no fanfare, Apple quietly retired the iPod Classic. This caused the device’s popularity to rise as fans pay top dollar for parts
September 12 – An article posts on how Drag Queens Facebook profiles are getting removed because they are not using their real names.
September 13 – Google acquired Polar for an undisclosed sum. Polar is a opinion tracking service
September 15 – Microsoft buys Mojang and Minecraft for $2.5 billion dollars
September 17 – iOS8 becomes available
BitTorrent ‘Bleep’ – a secure im – was made available for Alpha testing
Yelp and TinyCo were fined $450,000 by the FTC for violating children privacy rights
Goat Simulator is available for Android
September 18 – Larry Ellison steps down as Oracle CEO. He will still remain CTO as Safra Catz and Mark Hurd will be co-CEOs
Alibaba IPO launched to $92 per share making the company worth around $200 millioin. This is the biggest public tech company in history.
September 19 – After announcing it will shut down, Twitpic was acquired by an unknown source
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ Go on sale
September 20 – Google removes the Google+ signup requirement for new Google Accounts
September 23 – The first BendGate video comes up. iPhone 6+ models could easily be bent
FTC shuts down Butterfly Labs – a Bitcoin mining company – for stealing money from those who were trying to mine bitcoin
Google cuts ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, who’s business model was not based on Facts about climate change
September 24 – US federal court denied a petition on the use of “nude body scanners” at airports.
Apple released, then retracted the 8.0.1 update within hours after reports of the update disabling cellular reception and Touch ID
September 25 – Apple released iOS 8.0.2 to fix the earlier issues 8.0.1 was suppose to.
September 27 – Yahoo announced they will retire the Yahoo! Directory. This is one of the first Yahoo services offered. The service will officially retire on December 31
September 29 – HP and Applied Micro release the first 64-bit ARMv8 server.
September 30 – Microsoft announced Windows 10 – bringing back the start menu. It will also have multiple desktop mode and the same OS will be available on all devices. The OS will be available in 2015
Jan-March | April-June | July-Sept | Oct-Dec