2020 was scientifically speaking 400 months long.
We had zoom bombing Tick Tock and I say quiddity let's break down everything that happened in tech in 2020.
Back in January, when we We were still young and innocent.
The year kicked off with CES.
Now it's a show known for tech but one of the biggest stories was edible, impossible foods new meat free pork.
We also saw Sony's futuristic concept car and a Charmin's robot that brings you toilet paper.
That turned out to be quite prophetic for 2020.
As for exciting tech we;'d actually see out in the wild that came in February with the arrival of fun new folding phone.
Motorola gave us an updated version of it's called classic razor flip phone.
But Samsung undoubtedly won the day with two folding phones, the galaxy z flip, a razor rival and the brand new Galaxy fold two.
Now if it was a normal year, we would have seen these devices on show in March at the world's biggest mobile phone conference.
MWC but in a sign of things to come MWC was cancelled over fears of a new virus spreading across the world.
And then came March we watched as an early outbreak of the Coronavirus in Wuhan, China went global.
By the time the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, the world had completely changed.
outbreaks sprung up in Italy around the United States.
Our TV screens were filled with images that look like something out of a movie.
And we went from hand washing to social distancing to complete global lockdown within a matter of weeks.
While medical experts were learning about this threat in real time, the rest of us were adapting to a new normal and tech played a huge role.
Starting with Zoom.
This boardroom software quickly became our go to for everything from work to homeschooling, socializing and just staying sane.
The company faced a number of problems in the early days, including resume bombing.
Were strangers crashed Zoom calls uninvited, but still use the numbers skyrocketed and Zoom became a verb.
working from home also became the new normal.
Facebook, Google and Twitter close their mega campuses for what was initially supposed to be only a few weeks.
But eventually it became clear that no one would be going back to the office before the year was out.
By April we were stuck indoors looking for ways to pass the time in between sourdough baking sessions.
So that should be the perfect time to binge a brand new series on the big screen TV right, Instead we got quit.
The short form content mobile only streaming platform.
It might've been a case of bad timing or bigger problems don't even get me started on golden arm.
What was that show?>> He just wants you to be happy.
Can you make it out of either way
After more than a billion dollars in investment?
Quibi was eventually killed off just over six months after its launch.
We might not of wanted short shows to watch on the bus but you know what we did want?
Crazy tattooed man running animals pads and accusing their Bibles of Tiger murder.
By April Tiger King had taken the world by storm and we could not look away.
Next up came exciting Space News, SpaceX and NASA launched the demo to mission in May the first privately built crewed spacecraft and the first spaceflight to launch on US soil since the shuttle era ended in 2011.
Space is no longer just the domain of government agencies.
Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have proven that private space travel is here to stay.
In June came another seismic shift that was felt across the world.
After the police killing of George Floyd on May 25th.
The US faced a moment of reckoning on civil rights Black Lives Matter protests swept across the country and the world and tech companies were forced to make their stance on civil rights known, acknowledging systemic racism and promising to make change.
We also saw the stop hate for profit campaign brands like Verizon, Unilever, and Ford Pulled Ads from Facebook after civil rights groups said the company wasn't doing enough to combat hate speech.
Big tech wasn't out of the spotlight yet.
In July, the CEOs of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook fronted up to an antitrust hearing in Congress.
On whether the tech giants hold too much power.
What we got was mostly a political show, lots of posturing from politicians and fairly standard company lines from Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, the rest of the action against these companies in 2020.
Well that played out in the court.
The Department of Justice sued Google over it supposedly search and advertising monopolies.
Epic Games sued Apple saying its App Store rules were anti competitive.
And in the closing months of the year, the FTC and more than 40 states filed suits calling on Facebook to break up Instagram and WhatsApp from its business.
And we haven't even mentioned tik tok.
In August the Trump administration tried to ban the Chinese own video app.
But the move was eventually blocked by federal judges, tic toks parent company but dad's is still trying to hash out a deal to sell the US business.
But it doesn't look like it'll be disappearing off your phone anytime soon.
Which is good because I become, Kind of addicted to tick tock names Yes, I'm that guy.
All right This next one is surreal and it has to do with Ilan musk and a pig named Gertrude.
In August neural link the New York tech company headed up by musk showed off its brain computer interface implanted in a live Pig, and we saw ratings of the pigs brain activity in real time.
[SOUND]
May to pig meter.
Now musk says that this Fitbit for the skull as he called it, could one day be used to download memories, and even replay them in a robot body.
From pigs screens to the big screen.
Yeah, okay, I'm doing it.
I've run out of segways It's September.
I don't have anything left.
September was the month that movies really changed for good.
I shouldn't use real chin.
After months of delays, Disney took a lesson from other box office failures.
We're looking at new tenants.
Push this live action remake of Milan straight to streaming on Disney plus, one of brothers followed suit announcing that Wonder Woman 1984 would go straight to HBO max on the same day at hit theaters, and that all 2021 one brothers titles would do the same.
Now Disney wasn't just sending Milan straight to streaming either.
Don't invest a call at the end of the year, Disney announced a raft of new titles coming straight to Disney plus, including new Star Wars and Marvel originals.
It's clear the internet is shaking up Hollywood once again.
Speaking of how the internet reshaped our world, let's talk about online misinformation.
2020 saw this in spades, whether it was conspiracy theories about Coronavirus, or misinformation about politics.
In October, the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google were back before Congress, again, to answer questions about hate speech censorship and what content they allow on their platforms.
Democrats accuse the CEOs of allowing hate speech to run wild, while republicans accused them of playing politics and censoring conservative voices.
Mr.
Dorsey, who the hell elected you?
Of course, this whole hearing took on much greater significance, because it all happened one month before the elections.
Which brings us to November and the social networks had their work cut out for them.
Trying to limit the spread of misinformation around voting and elections.
Twitter and Facebook used warning labels to slow the spread of incorrect posts And Twitter even went as far as hiding some of president Trump's tweets.
Then after the election, slower vote, counting and delays around postal votes meant we saw even more misinformation, but there was one good thing about the slow vote count.
It gave us plenty of time to share map daddy memes.
Speaking of things that take forever, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox series X launched in November, but good luck getting your hands on one.
With holiday sales and literally everyone being stuck inside it was a matter of watching online stock levels and then fighting off your fellow gamers and let's not lie, probably a few thoughts to get your hands on one Wargamers got the next gen consoles in November, Apple fans got a next generation processor, the M1 chip.
Goodbye Intel, Hello Apple Silicon.
Which brings us to December.
And at this point ,it really feels like it's been 84 years, but we finally closed out on some good news.
The first Covid 19 vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech started being given to members of the public.
The first dose went to a 90 year old woman in the UK.
And then well in a sign that we couldn't have predicted 2020 if we tried, the second vaccine went to William Shakespeare.
So I guess all's well that ends well.
Right, it has been a huge year, and we didn't even get to things like Dr. Fauci, Myrtle Hornets, Italian balcony concerts.
But I think all that is going to have to wait for another video.
In the meantime, thank you for sticking with CNET this year and he is to a better 2021 I cannot emphasize enough how much of a bad decision it was to drink gin.
My throat Is on the fire.
Okay
