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It’s been an interesting year, this 2011. But as we are only days from the end, it’s time to look back at what happened and reflect. So I went through all of 2011, and found those dates that shaped tech history for the year. A review in Tech history for 2011.

Of course, this is a list that will be completed in the next couple weeks. If you see something missing, please let me know. I’ll compare and get it corrected.

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January 10 – AMD‘s CEO Dirk Meyer resigns
January 11 – Google announced they will be dropping H.264

January 11 – Apple announces that iPhone will be coming to Verizon

The rumor mill was running wild, but on January 11th, Apple finally announced that Verizon will be getting the iPhone4. It had little issues, like you couldn’t talk and surf at the same time. Nonetheless, this broke the long-standing AT&T domination of the iPhone market. Verizon has taken 1/3 of the iPhone market.

January 13 – IBM Watson to take on Jeopardy
January 15 – Wikipedia hits 15 years old
January 19 – Johnny Chung Lee – Kinect researcher – jumps from Microsoft to Google
January 20 – Google CEO Eric Schmidt steps down, Larry Page takes his place

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February 2 – Google shows off Honeycomb

Android shows the world version 3.0 – a.k.a. Honeycomb. This enabled tablet support and holographic user interface

February 6 – Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, passes away
February 9 – HP announced Palm Pre3
February 11 – Microsoft and Nokia announce partnership
February 21 – Alibaba.com CEO and COO resigned due to fraud probe
February 23 – Honeycomb SDK released
February 24 – Google rolled out algorithm change, which hurt sites re-aggregating content.
March 1 – Paul Devine admits he took part in a Money laundering scheme while at Apple.

March 2  – Apple Launched iPad2

Second generation iPad, using the new Apple A5 chip. The iPad2 also increased the screen resolution and added a front-facing camera.

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March 1 – Bank of America online banking goes down
March 11 – DOJ wins access to WikiLeaks Twitter accounts.
March 11 – Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

March 20 – AT&T announced intention to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion

AT&T announced it would being going after T-Mobile. Unfortunately, it came with a lot of retaliation. Ultimately, AT&T will back out of the acquisition.

March 22 – New York court rejects the Google Books settlement
March 26 – Paul Baran, who was instrumental for developing the Internet, passed away
March 28 – James Gosling (Java founder) joins Google
March 28 – Robert Kimball steps down as CEO of RealNetworks
March 30 – Google settles with FCC over Google Buzz privacy issues
March 30 – Google launches the +1 Button
March 31 – GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons is chastised for an online video of him killing an elephant

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April 5 – Mozilla absorbs Thunderbird group

April 6 – Sony websites go down from Anonymous attack

To protest the PS3 hacker lawsuit, Anonymous initiated “Operation Payback” – taking down the Playstation network for weeks. It also caused a lot of negative feedback from the customers.

April 8 – Commodore 64 comes back from the dead.
April 8 – Google signs deal with DOJ on ITA (Travel) acquisition
April 12 – Cisco discontinues the Flip camera
April 21 – Google launches “Google Offers”
April 22 – Apple signs cloud deal with Warner Music Group
April 23 – Norio Ohga, former president of Sony, passed away
April 28 – Google Chrome 11 launches with speech to text option

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May 1 – Twitter breaks the news to the US that Osama Bin Laden was killed

The Twitterverse was in full mode when it broke the news that Osama Bin Laden’s bunker was infiltrated and Alkida’s leader was shot to death. While it’s not on the top trending topics of 2011 for Twitter, it was the 3rd highest trending topic in Social Media.

May 10 – Microsoft announced it will acquire Skype for $8.5 billion

May 11 – Google launches Chromebook, ChromeOS

Eric Schmidt announced the ChromeOS and a new notebook called “Chromebook”. Samsung Chromebooks went on sale at $399 for a WiFi model. 3G models would be coming out soon. The Chrome store would also be available to install apps and several web-based software programs will also become available.

May 14 – After being offline for weeks, Sony begins to relaunch Playstation Network
May 20 – Google scraps their newspaper scanning program.
May 23 – Twitter purchases TweekDeck for $40 million
May 26 – Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is named to presidential advisory panel
May 31 – Intel announces they will be developing the Ultrabook

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June 1 – Google +1 button is made available for websites
June 1 – Apple purchased iCloud.com for $4.5 million
June 6 – Microsoft announced Live TV will come to XBox360

June 6 – Apple unveils Lion, iOS5 and iCloud

June 16 – Gartner announced mobile ad sales will generate $3.3 billion in 2011
June 16 – Comcast debuts 1Gbps connection and cloud based channel surfing
June 21 – Apple released Final Cut Pro X
June 22 – Comscore announced Google hit 1 billion site visitors in May 2011
June 24 – Google closes Google Health, PowerMeter
June 28 – Microsoft debuts Office 365

June 28 – Google launches a beta of Google+

Touted to be a “Facebook Killa”, Google launched a beta of Google+ – Their new social network. It was an invite-only beta, and introduced the “Hangout”, which was the ability to have up to 10 people on video chat.

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July 1 – HP launched TouchPad tablet
July 4 – Microsoft signs search pact with Baidu
July 6 – Facebook launched Facebook Video Chat
July 13 – Netflix announced price change for DVD and streaming video
July 13 – Microsoft announced it will open 75 new stores

July 14 – Spotify launched in the US

Famous in the UK, Spotify brought their music service to the US. You could stream music from your PC to other devices, or pay a subscription fee to listen to music on Spotify’s network.

July 19 – FBI raids homes suspected to be part of Anonymous
July 19 – Apple released OS X Lion, new Mac Mini, Macbook Air, Thunderbolt display
July 20 – A Fake Apple store was spotted in China
July 20 – Roku 2 is launched
July 24 – The first episode of TWit broadcasts from the TWiT brickhouse
July 27 – UK announced they arrested LulzSec and Anonymous spokesperson
July 28 – Twitter injects paid tweets into streams
July 29 – Google acquires over 1,000 of IBM’s patents

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August 15 – Google announced it would buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

Since Motorola had strong ties with Google Android already, it was considered a good idea to bring Motorola Mobility into the fold. Motorola Mobility makes smartphones, tablets, bluetooth devices and more.

August 15 – SF Bart subway closes during Anonymous protest
August 16 – A Prototype Macbook with 3G shows up on eBay. It is pulled

August 18 – HP announced it is considering selling their PC division. CEO Leo Apatheker also announced that all WebOS production be halted

This caused an uproar of the $99 Tablet. Later, HP backed down on the announcements and CEO Leo Apatheker would be fired. HP has now made WebOS open source.

August 23 – Yale and Purdue Universities report exposure to over 43,000 social security numbers

August 26 – Steve Jobs resigns from Apple due to health reasons.

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September 1 – The men who sold the iPhone prototype plead not guilty to theft charges
September 1 – Michael Arrington announced he is working with AOL to create the CrunchFund
September 2 – Another Apple iPhone prototype goes missing

September 2 – Google closes Fast Flip, Google Desktop, Aardvark, and Google Web Security
September 6 – Carol Bartz sends an email to employees saying she was fired from Yahoo!

September 7 – Michael Arrington is fired from TechCrunch

Founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington was fired due to his new venture – CrunchFund. AOL felt he would not be objective in reporting the news.

September 8 – Google buys Zagat
September 8 – Michael Hart, creator of the e-book, passed away
September 9 – Script kiddies hack NBC News and report of a fake attack on ground zero.
September 11 – 10 year anniversary of 9-11
September 15 – Heidi Klum announced the most dangerous search celeb on the net
September 16 – 450 GoDaddy hosted sites were compromised
September 17 – Julius Blank, who founded Fairchild Semiconductor, passes away

September 19 – CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix was spinning off their DVD division to Qwikster

In probably one of the biggest blunders of 2011, Netflix announced the DVD home-delivery service was to be spun off and put up for sale. The result of this action: Netflix shares dropped 2/3rds over a 2 month period, as Netflix lost 800,000 customers. Reed Hastings put out a public apology later and rescinded the spin-off.

September 19 – Google launched Wallet
September 22 – HP CEO Leo Apotheker gets fired, replaced by Meg Whitman
September 25 – At F8, Mark Zuckerberg launches timeline and open graph
September 27 – Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7.5 – Mango
September 28 – Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch
September 30 – Google opens Chromezone store

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October 4 – Apple announced iPhone iOS5, 4S, Siri

October 5 – Steve Jobs passed away

One day after the launch of 4S, Steven Jobs passes away.

October 6 – Nuance purchased Swype for $100 million
October 11 – Robert Galvin, former CEO of Motorola, passes away
October 12 – Dennis Ritchie, designer of C programming language, passes away

October 14 – iPhone 4S launches
October 14 – Google announced plans to end Google Buzz
October 14 – RIM service goes down
October 17 – Yahoo CTO Raymie Stat resigns

October 19 – Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was released

October 23 – Steve Jobs Biography is released
October 24 – Siri co-founder Kittlaus leaves Apple
October 28 – Google TV gets Honeycomb update

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November 3 – IBM’s CEO John Open passed away
November 6 – YouTube and Disney cut a deal that brings original videos to YouTube
November 6 – Charles Walton, inventor of RFID, passed away
November 7 – Google launches brand pages in Google +
November 8 – Mozilla launch Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8
November 11 – Logitech discontinues all production of Google TV appliances. States they lost over $100 million in the revue
November 12 – 22 year old Ilya Zhitomirskiy, founder of Diaspora, passed away
November 14 – AMD launches Opteron 6200 server chips with 16-cores
November 15 – Apple iMatch goes live

November 15 – Amazon released Kindle Fire

In effort to compete with iPad, Jeff Bezos released the next version of the Kindle, the Kindle Fire. This $199 Android tablet would be available at Amazon.com

November 16 – Google Music debuts
November 19 – Barnes & Noble release the Nook Color for $249
November 21 – Apple announced they will have a Black Friday sale
November 22 – Google ends Wave, Knol
November 30 – Spotify adds app platform

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December 4 – HP chair Patricia Dunn passes away

December 6 – .xxx goes live

After years of debate, the .xxx top level domain finally goes live.

December 7 – After delay, Microsoft released XBox360 update with Live TV, gesture and voice commands
December 8 – Twitter redesigns their homepage
December 16 – Zynga files IPO

 

Did we forget anything? Let me know @dayintechhist