Year in review: On Web, innovation meets hard times

#rb_bodyWrap .left_content h2{font-family:Georgia, serif;} #right_content .topics ul.topics_list{padding-right:4px;} #rb_bodyWrap div#right_content td,#rb_bodyWrap div#right_content tr,#rb_bodyWrap div#right_content tbody,#rb_bodyWrap div#right_content table, #rb_bodyWrap ul.topics_list, ul.topics_list li {vertical-align:top;} #rb_bodyWrap div#right_content td{padding:4px;} #rb_bodyWrap #right_content h4{font-family:Georgia, serif;color:#990000;} div#storyMeta{font-size:115%;} #contentMain a:hover{color:#990000;} #rb_bodyWrap #right_content table{font-size:105%} Web 2.0 PageVars.set('title', escape("On Web, innovation meets hard times")); PageVars.set('description', escape("A lot progress took place this year in Web start-ups and online technology, before the dark clouds of recession and layoff swept in.")); PageVars.set('href', "http://news.cnet.com/2009-7345_3-6248471.html"); On Web, innovation meets hard times By Rafe Needleman Staff Writer, CNET News Published: December 22, 2008, 11:00 AM PST Print E-mail Share cnet_news406:http%3A%2F%2Fnews.cnet.com%2F2009-7345_3-6248471.html On the Web, as in other sectors of the economy, 2008 will be remembered as the beginning of an economic downturn. There's no avoiding the fact that . But letting what happened at the end of the year color our thinking could lead us to overlook impressive innovation and progress in Web start-ups and online technology in general. The glimmer of hope: than firing people--even though the overall number of jobs lost far outstrips jobs gained. The Web 2.0 battleground remained not just a fight for users of services, but a fight for developers. Competing standards for online applications, media, identity, and social networks duked it out in 2008 and will continue to do so in 2009. Many of the battles put open-source standards--such as OpenID for identity--against "walled gardens" run by single companies. Social-network giant Facebook, for example, has been strategically slow to embrace standards, opting for its own identity system () instead of embracing OpenID, and for its own application platform as opposed to the emerging . This year Microsoft finally admitted that the traditional Office suite software concept is running out of gas and revealed that it's working on online versions of its productivity apps. However, in typical Microsoft fashion, the announcement predated the actual planned release of the product by months. Meanwhile, Google Docs improved--it's now a full suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. And Zoho rolled out lots of little cloud-based productivity and business apps on top of its online office suite. Credit: Twitter The Twitter "fail whale" is cute despite the fact that it stands for nothing but trouble. Google also launched its own browser this year--not just a little labs project, but a solid, very fast, and Web browser with usability improvements over front-runner products by Microsoft and Mozilla. Market share for Chrome grew to measurable levels after only a few months. One hundred days after Google launched it into beta, the company announced the software was . (Meanwhile, long-standing Gmail remains in beta.) On the browser front, , and easily blew by Mozilla's goal to be the app , even though the day got started late. . Many pundits predicted a widespread move of software to Web-based services, or the "cloud," and there was a lot of talk of application vendors using suites like Amazon Web Services to host their products. However, and at dimmed enthusiasm for the concept. Even though the outages were brief, the expectations for these infrastructure providers were immense. Other Web service and app failures this year included (repeatedly), (), Facebook, and . Twitter got competitors the year with the emergence of business-focused services like Yammer, Presently, and Socialcast. During Twitter's midyear outages, the new social feed aggregator FriendFeed picked up Twitter's disaffected users. Twitter is running reliably again. Still, the company is still not making money, although the founders want people to believe they have a plan. Also this year, Google added the capability for users to , but the rankings don't--yet--influence what other users see on search result pages. Semantic search did not take off this year, as some expected. The highly-hyped PowerSet search start-up did not deliver its end-user product and was instead . It remains to be seen what Redmond does with the technology. Cuil, founded by a Google ex-pat, launched another eagerly-anticipated natural-language search product, but at launch the service . Also in the category of things that didn't happen: Twitter was . Yahoo was not bought by Microsoft. The 2008 presidential election was watchable online in , from clever apps to live-streamed debates on Current, Hulu, and the sites of more traditional television networks. A popular showed the real-time zeitgeist during debates and during the election. Speaking of voting, in CNET's annual Webware 100 awards, nearly 2 million votes were cast to pick the top Web applications. For the second year in a row, the top vote-getting social network was Gaia, illustrating the awesome power of the teen-girl demographic. Finally, the Web left Earth in 2008. The interplanetary network that Vint Cerf envisioned years ago got its . 2008 Highlights The long goodbye: As Microsoft founder Bill Gates prepared to leave the CEO role at Microsoft, he gave several talks on the future of the company, technology. January 6, 2008 Amazon suffered one of the Web's several high-profile outages in 2008 that shook confidence in Web 2.0 as a business platform. February 15, 2008 more highlights below Adobe Systems released Adobe Integrated Runtime software, a new cross-platform service that makes installing apps from the Web easy. February 24, 2008 The major social network launches a music streaming service with access to millions of free tracks. April 3, 2008 Facebook announced the debut of Facebook Connect, a new technology for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites. May 9, 2008 Microsoft scooped up Powerset to buttress its search efforts. It's not a replacement for increasing market share by acquiring Yahoo Search, but it gives Microsoft some differentiated search technology. July 1, 2008 AOL is scrapping some online destinations but will push others harder in an attempt to improve its finances, according to internal memos. July 25, 2008 Cuil bungles launch of high-profile search engine Google challenger Cuil launched in blaze of glory. And it went down in a ball of flames. Immediately after launch, the criticism started to pile on: results were incomplete, weird, and missing. July 28, 2008 Google launches Chrome browser Search giant Google launched its own browser to compete with Microsoft and Mozilla. After only 100 days and 14 updates, the browser was promoted out of beta. September 1, 2008 Microsoft and Yahoo: No deal special report After months of speculation and dalliance, Microsoft failed to strike a deal to buy out Yahoo. September 10, 2008 Video content hub Hulu secured the rights to stream two presidential debates live on the Web. October 7, 2008 A Microsoft blog reiterated that the Web-based version of Office won't be tied to either Windows or Internet Explorer. November 12, 2008 Why we're glad that the Facebook/Twitter deal didn't go through. November 24, 2008 Is Google's Chrome browser mainstream? Not quite, but it's doing better than we expected. November 26, 2008 With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. December 16, 2008 Tracking the tech downturn special report Global economic troubles took their toll on the tech industry, including Web 2.0 companies. December 19, 2008 Additional headlines eBay sellers start weeklong boycott A look at IE8 Beta