Internet time and doomsday asteroids: this week in tech, 20 years ago
It’s difficult to remember a time when online media wasn’t arranged largely around memetic cultural events. On any given April 20th in recent years, for instance, you can find all sorts of weed-themed stories pegged around the unofficial holiday for marijuana. That’s not so in 1999: a search for “420” brings up precious few results.
Instead, the science and technology news of late April included one big company shake-up, some odd developments in space, and an extremely doomed game studio founded by Michael Crichton. Here’s this week in tech, 20 years ago.
Compaq’s CEO got kicked out
Compaq was the biggest personal computer manufacturer in the world. But in April 1999, it was set to disappoint shareholders with terrible earnings. So,…
