GRIT - Ed.04 - Flipbook - Page 7
AUGUST
2020
A BRIEF HISTORY
OF DIGITIZATION
Ecommerce share of
retail sales rises at the
predicted speed of
ten-years in the span
of five months
MARCH
Wikileaks collaborates with
major media organizations to
release US diplomatic cables.
Pinterest, Instagram and
Quora are all launched
We’ve experienced a step function increase in digital adoption over the last year. But what
milestones have led up to this point, and how does it all relate? Taking a step back from
current events, we’ve compiled a timeline of digitization over the last thirty years, highlighting
key innovations that continue to shape our lives today.
1991
2001
Wikipedia and
3G are launched
1994
Google started trading
on NASDAQ at $85 a
share. Mozilla released
Firefox 1.0. Facebook
is launched
COVID-19 declared
a global pandemic,
all things shift digital
2012
2008
2004
The first website is published
by Tim Berners Lee
2020
2010
Ecommerce sales top
1TN worldwide. Facebook
reached 1BN monthly
active users
HTML5 is introduced.
Google released the
Chrome Web browser.
Apple’s App Store and
Groupon are launched
2006
The first ecommerce
transaction, rumoured
to be a pepperoni pizza
from Pizza Hut
Amazon Web
Services launched
Elastic Compute
Cloud. Shopify and
Twitter are launched
1997
2019
The WiFi alliance
is created. Netflix
is launched
2015
Windows 10
is released
2013
Docker introduced
open-source OS
container software
2007
Apple launched the
first iPhone, creating
the mobile internet as
we know it today
1995
Internet Explorer,
Microsoft’s Windows
95, Amazon, Yahoo
and eBay are launched
1998
Google is
launched
1993
Global Network Navigator is launched,
the first commercial web publication and
the first website to offer clickable ads
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GRIT
2005
The term “big data” is coined
by Roger Mougalas. Reddit and
YouTube are both launched
2002
For the first time, digital information
storage surpasses non-digital
2018
The Facebook/Cambridge
Analytica Data Scandal
made headlines
2011
Apple’s iCloud is
launched. Siri becomes
the first digital assistant
for smartphones
2009
TikTok is launched.
IBM launched IBM
Q System One, the
first-ever circuit-based
commercial quantum
computer
2014
Number of Internet users reached 1BN
globally. Amazon announced the launch
of Alexa alongside the Echo
Bing and 4G are both launched
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