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Web giants get bigger, location takes off
Jump to: Featured stories from 2010
The easiest way to sum up the Web in 2010 is that it was a year of growth. The big got bigger and smaller companies came out of the woodwork with new plays on old ideas. It was also the year of location services, HTML5, and a growing sense of openness, both in terms of the technologies that started to get used and the shift in making information more public.
The beginning of the year, however, was marked with a sense of uncertainty as tensions between Google and China grew into what would become a large-scale issue of censorship and China's control of information on the Web.
For years, Google had been self-censoring the results on the Chinese version of its service to comply with local laws. But beginning in January, the company said that it would no longer be doing so. In order to avoid a complete block on its service, Google effectively shut down the Chinese version of its home page and began re-directing traffic to an uncensored version that was hosted in Hong Kong. The conflict brought to attention the challenges of making Web sites work internationally when countries have put into place local laws and regulations that affect the flow of information.
That point came a little closer to home with WikiLeaks, a site that hosted leaked documents, many of which were considered classified by various international governments. While the site itself launched back in 2006, 2010 proved to be its banner year, with it posting a large number of damning documents on both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. By the end of the 2010, the site had been left seeking a safe haven for its co-founder Julian Assange, as well as its hosting, having been ousted from Amazon's EC2.
Google's China conflict and the WikiLeaks saga also managed to come at a time when the rest of the Web was opening up to new layers of user information--mainly about location. While new location-based start-ups like Foursquare and Gowalla had risen to popularity in 2009, this year some of the larger services like Twitter and Facebook rolled out deep integration with location services that let users share where they were with their friends or the world at large.
Twitter's push for location actually got underway in 2009, but it was augmented heavily in 2010 when the company added a local trends feature. This shows users a custom-tailored list of things going on around them that make use of the location technology. A few months later, the company added another angle to location, giving users the option to pick out nearby businesses as their tweeting location.
Facebook took a similar approach with the launch of its Places feature. This gave users a way to check in to a location. It also gave businesses something other than their business or fan pages to see how Facebook users were interacting with their brand. This was further augmented with a deals program, launched several months later, that gives businesses a way to reward frequent customers, or entice Facebook users who might be nearby.
In fact, rewards programs and discount purchases made a big business push in 2010 with the rise of Groupon. The service launched in late 2008, but gained in popularity during the last two years for its group discounting. It's gotten two large rounds of funding and was nearly bought by Google at the end of the year in what would have been a reported $6 billion deal. Amazon, meanwhile, invested $175 million in Groupon competitor LivingSocial.
Even without the Groupon buy, Google acquired a record number of businesses inside of 12 months, most of which were U.S.-based. Some big names include ITA Software for $700 million (pending Department of Justice probe), social-gaming site Slide.com, photo editor Picnik, and Like.com. In 2010, Google also closed its 2009 acquisition of mobile advertiser AdMob.
Some other notable mergers and acquisitions during the year include Amazon's buys of Amie Street as well as quirky online retailer Woot.com. Moves in the video space included Hewlett-Packard Snapfish's acquisition of Motionbox, AOL's buy of 5min, and Qlipso's acquisition of Veoh's assets. 2010 also saw the offloading of some sites from one big company to another, like Yahoo selling off Zimbra to VMware and its Hotjobs product to Monster. AOL did a little trimming as well, selling social network Bebo to Criterion.
Along with sites that were bought and sold, there were quite a few products that simply did not make it through the year. Google's Wave was one of them. Despite a big push from Google in Wave's early days, the product stayed in private beta for most of its existence, before opening up to everyone in late May. Google pulled the plug on Wave less than three months later, citing poor user adoption. Other sites that are no longer with us include Yahoo's Search Monkey, the "lite" version of Facebook, the much-hyped (but poorly executed) Cuil, and Six Apart's Vox blogging tool.
But there were quite a few high-profile products launched during the course of the year that have managed to stick around. Google launched social service Buzz near the beginning of the year, though ran into some major user privacy snafus along the way that were later fixed. Microsoft launched an online, consumer-oriented version its Office suite called Office Web Apps, along with a standalone word processing tool that runs inside of Facebook called Docs. Movie and TV show catch-up service Hulu also finally got around to rolling out a paid version of its service called Hulu Plus, which received a price cut just a few months after its introduction.
Lastly, one of the biggest trends of 2010 was a move towards HTML5--something that will no doubt continue to see wider adoption and its fair share of controversy. Large video services like YouTube and Vimeo began moving their video players to HTML5, and entire sites like Scribd and Glide re-jiggered their interfaces from all-Adobe Flash, to an HTML5 experience. Even Microsoft, which had strongly been pushing its Silverlight technology as the end-all, be-all for video and rich-application interface technology, said the next version of its IE9 browser would have strong HTML5 compliance and optimizations.
Others--like Hulu.com, bucked the trend and instead committed to Flash over the long haul, particularly for its security features and capability to stream protected video content.
Where will the Web take us in 2011? If 2010's feeding frenzy of acquisitions is any indication, we're going to see more growth among the Web giants and far more comprehensiveness in the services they offer. Facebook's ambitious rollout of new services this year offers such proof. The big question then is whether smaller players will have the vision and tenacity to stay independent and build Web empires of their own.
Featured coverage from 2010
Google to stop censoring in China, may pull out
Following attacks on Gmail accounts of human rights activists, Google says it will no longer censor search results in China and might shut down Google.cn.
What Google needs to learn from Buzz backlash
Google's decision to use mostly internal testing before launching Google Buzz backfired: sure, the product didn't leak, but objections to its privacy policies were muted until it launched.
Yahoo, Microsoft make search pact official (FAQ)
With the blessing of U.S. and European regulators, Yahoo and Microsoft are free to implement their search partnership. What's in store for users and advertisers?
Web video gets H.264 royalty reprieve
The group that licenses the widely used H.264 video compression technology decides against adding a Web-streaming royalty charge that could have helped rival formats such as Ogg Theora.
Adobe fights Apple with pro-Flash ad campaign
The next battle in the Apple-Adobe war over Flash takes the form of an Adobe publicity campaign, including its own letter propounding openness.
Navigate Facebook's new privacy paradigm
Once again, Facebook has changed its privacy settings. Today's improvements are still a mixed bag, but a better one: they are generally easier to use but not as simple as they could be. There are a couple of curve balls thrown in, too.
Deciphering Google's Wi-Fi headache (FAQ)
Life at the Googleplex has grown a little more tense following the stunning admission that Google had been collecting personal data from Wi-Fi networks for years. How did this happen?
Growing pains afflict HTML5 standardization
Emotional disagreements between two groups are disrupting the creation of the high-profile standard at the heart of the next-generation Web.
Why I gave up on Digg
Digg used to be one of my big online habits, but not anymore. Here's why I'm happier now that I've moved on to something else.
Facebook's half-billion milestone is official
There are now 500 million people actively using the social-networking site, and the company is trumpeting it with the shared stories of how it's been used to connect people around the world.
'Check-in' craze moves beyond location
GetGlue, an iPhone app and Web site that lets you tell your friends what you're reading or watching and also promises on-target recommendations, has a new deal with HBO.
Google pulls plug on Google Wave
The search giant says the real-time collaboration tool saw less use than the company had hoped. The company will aim to use technology in other products.
Will Facebook have a 'vestigial limb' problem?
A little-noticed component of the new Facebook Groups launch is that the old ones are sticking around. They'll be more or less obsolete, but they won't quite fade away.
How Google tested Google Instant
As Google contemplated a major change to its search interface, it put testers through the paces to make sure it got the final implementation just right.
YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute
YouTube is enjoying strong growth, the company announces. Currently, people are uploading 35 hours of video every minute. That's a big jump from just last spring.
Battle lines drawn for 3D on the Web
Two major efforts are under way to bring 3D graphics to the Web: Flash and WebGL. It's not clear which, if either, will prevail--but Microsoft holds the swing vote.
- In 2011, the Web will thankfully take us to the end of Flash.
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