The 1990s :: Technology and Computing's Metamorphasis

• 1990 :: Cray reveals their new supercomputer, the Y-MP2E. The price tag is 2.2 million. Symantec releases Norton Anti Virus. Development begins on Java at Sun Microsystems. id Software is founded.
• 1991 :: Tim Berners-Lee of CERN blows everyone's mind with HTML. His concepts of URLs and HTTP allowed the internet to expand into the WWW. He now runs the WWW Consortium. AMD releases their own 386 microprocessor, directly competing with industry giant Intel. EICAR (European Institute for Computer Virus Research ) is founded. Linux is invented by Linus Torvalds. PGP is released.
• 1992 :: Hysteria over the Michelangelo virus is fueled by the media, convincing users that 1/4 of the world's hard drives would be overwritten. Apple vs Microsoft is dismissed. Intel announces their new processor will be called Pentium. Development of the Mosaic web browser begins.
• 1993 :: InterNIC is created by the National Science Foundation for registration and directory services on the net. Windows NT is introduced. id Software releases the legendary Doom video game. NVIDIA is incorporated.
• 1994 :: The Internet grows to more than 25 million users. The first online bank is introduced. Yahoo and Netscape are launched. This is followed by the release of Netscape Navigator. 3dfx Interactive is founded.
• 1995 :: Windows 95 is introduced. Amazon sells it's first book online. Ebay is founded. It would soon soar to become the largest online auction site. Toy Story becomes the first full length feature film made completely with CGI. Apache Web Server arrives. The Sony PlayStation is released in North America. The Ruby programming language is publicly released. Red Hat Inc. is formed.
• 1996 :: CD-RW technology is developed. Internet Explorer arrives. Lycos is launched. Microsoft releases Exchange.
• 1997 :: IBM introduces Deep Blue, the fastest computer of it's day. It beats Gary Kasparov in a game of chess. The U.S. Supreme Court rejects the Communications Decency Act, ruling it violates the First Amendment.
• 1998 :: Google, now the most popular search engine, is created. The government creates ICANN ( Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names) to privatize the registration of domain names. The Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act becomes law. Microsoft releases Windows 98.
• 1999 :: Fear of the Millennium Bug causes industrialized countries and companies around the world to spend billions in correcting the error before the dawn of the new century. Shawn Fanning creates Napster.