Digital Innovation Days

When the world’s first ever web server (http://info.cern.ch/) went live at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) on the 24th of December, 1990, it marked the creation of one of the four essentials of the World Wide Web: HTML, web protocol, web browser, and web server. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, set up a NeXT computer at CERN as the first ever server. However, this web server was more of a small intranet for information sharing among CERN physicists rather than being “world wide”. By 1991, several other web servers had been created, all located at CERN. By this time, it had been successfully tested that document retrieval could be performed from web servers on incompatible computer systems. However, since all the web servers were at CERN, the possibility of retrieving data from halfway across the world was questionable. To do so, a computer was set up with the help of Paul Kunz, a physicist at Stanford University. This server was located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and by the end of 1991, it went live, becoming the first web server outside Europe. What started from a single NeXT computer at a nuclear research lab in Europe has now grown into an indispensable part of the internet globally. A world without web servers means a world where information cannot be retrieved from any part of the world within an instant - essentially unimaginable. The millions of servers online are responsible for displaying website content by storing, preprocessing, and delivering the requested web pages to users. The sheer significance of this invention can be gauged by the fact that all data that are shared over the internet today are hosted on web servers. And while the first web server could only retrieve data from other servers located in CERN, today this retrieval can quickly be done across oceans and continents.

Larry Wall released the general-purpose programming language Perl on the 18th of December, 1987. It was meant to offer text manipulation, web development, network programming, system administration, and Graphics User Interface (GUI) development, among other tasks. With its tagline, “easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible”, Perl was designed to make computer programming easier and faster. With the advent of the web, Perl also gained momentum. In fact, it became the dominant language for Common Interface Gateway (CGI) programming. The regular expression and string parsing abilities that this language offered brought it immense popularity as well. System administration tasks that were too complex for a shell script but not worth the effort when coding in C, were easily done with Perl. This also became the perfect language to interact with databases, leading to its widespread use to implement dynamic websites. True to its motto of TIMTOWTDI (“there is more than one way to do it”), Perl cemented its position as a very versatile and flexible language since it allowed the user to adopt any kind of programming style, be it procedural or object-oriented. Although Perl may not be sitting atop the list of the most commonly-used programming languages today, its uniqueness largely stems from its compatibility with other programming languages. Perl is being used throughout the web and it is also termed as the “duct tape of the Internet” because it tied together systems and interfaces that could not work together prior to Perl. While many think that Perl has “died” as a language now, it is still being heavily used not just for maintaining existing projects but also for creating new ones. In fact, it is still considered among the best coding languages to increase one’s employability as well as remuneration.

Google marked the release of its web browser on the 11th of December, 2008, when it launched the first stable public version of Chrome. Although the tech giant had previously released 3 versions for testing, they were beta versions. With the release of version 1, Chrome entered a market where users were growing frustrated with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox was gaining momentum. By 2013, Chrome was dominating the web browser industry, clearly surpassing Internet Explorer and Firefox. The software used certain features from Apple’s WebKit open-source rendering engine as well as Firefox, and its source code was made available by Google as part of its Chromium project. Google Chrome stood out due to a multitude of features. For starters, it strictly focused on web standards. This came at a time when Microsoft was struggling with proprietary web standards for its own web navigator, Internet Explorer. Chrome also introduced the idea of sandboxing in a web browser. By sandboxing individual tabs, if one of them crashed, the others would not be affected. This led to improved speed and stability although it required each tab to use as much dedicated memory as the first one. However, when any tab was closed, it released its allocated memory, effectively solving a problem many older browsers were facing and which could only be fixed by restarting them. Today, Google Chrome is the undisputed leader in web browsers. With a market share of nearly 65%, it is the most popular web browser in 2021. It is more than just a web navigator now. In fact, it can be viewed as a complete platform that can run on different operating systems including Windows, Android, Linux, macOS, and iOS. From its release till now, Google Chrome has added value for the users and helped drive innovation in the field.

On the 2nd of December, 1991, Apple released its first public version of QuickTime and brought video to Mac users. This original version contained graphics, animations, and video codecs and garnered Apple much popularity as a leading multimedia technology giant. Though it was a huge win for the company, the reason QuickTime was highly celebrated at its release is that it brought videos to personal computers, a major ambition in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since bringing video to personal computers was considered a huge milestone to achieve in the 1980s, significant work had been done to accomplish this goal even before the release of QuickTime. Steve Perlman, an engineer at Apple, wrote a program that allowed video playback on Mac. This was called QuickScan and was publicly demonstrated before Apple decided to cancel it, citing that this software required its own graphics chip to run. Though this program was never released, it eventually led to the development of QuickTime. QuickTime is often praised for letting users play videos. However, what was even more revolutionising was the manner in which it played the video. QuickTime worked by letting the soundtrack play while the frame rate of the video varied accordingly. For instance, if a CPU was too slow to handle a high frame rate, some of the frames were skipped altogether to keep up with the soundtrack. To give an estimate, back then, you could play movies with 160×120 pixels at roughly 10 frames per second, on say, a Mac IIci or IIcx system. Although this was criticised by a few at the time, what is noteworthy here is that back then, Windows was struggling to even provide a standardised audio playback, let alone a video option.

The Xbox 360 was released on the 22nd of November, 2005, to glowing reviews and stellar sales. In fact, the launch event was a wild time in itself with a Best Buy representative announcing that everyone who wanted an Xbox 360, would be able to leave with one. This happened at the “Zero Hour” event in the Mojave Desert where Microsoft launched its new Xbox. This seventh generation video game console is the successor to the original Xbox and competed with Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s wii. Although this product did not fare as well as its competitors in terms of sales and sheer numbers, the Xbox 360 was lauded for the innovation it brought to video gaming. Some of its exciting new features included the ability to stream music, videos, and movies, the inclusion of wireless controllers, and expanded hard drives. However, what was truly needed at this point and was provided by the Xbox 360 was an unparalleled level of hardware and software security in video games. In fact, Chris Satchell, an engineer for this device, claimed this box to have the levels of security that the hacker community had never seen before. Two other versions of this device were also released later; the Xbox 360 S in 2010 and the Xbox 360 E in 2013. In 2009, the Xbox 360 became the world's best-selling video game console and by 2014, this console had sold nearly 84 million units. Also, from 2011 to 2013, the Xbox 360 held the record for the best-selling console for 24-months straight. This further tells how this device was immensely successful not only across the U.S. but Europe as well owing to its best-in-class online play at that time and strong third-party support due to easy development. In fact, with exclusive games such as Halo, even non-gamers were excitedly buying the Xbox 360.

When the Kindle by Amazon went on sale on the 19th of November, 2007, it entered a market where tablets, phones, personal computers, and e-readers existed. Notwithstanding, this device was sold out within 5.5 hours and was even dubbed the “iPod of reading”. Then what was so revolutionising about this e-reader? Kindle’s main aim was to bring books to people and this is one goal that it has consistently stuck by and which has allowed it to evolve through all these years. This device was never meant to compete with any of the other fancy electronic gadgets at the time or offer everything in just one device. It was simply created to let users read. The original Kindle had a 6-inch E ink display, offered wireless connectivity, included a full keyboard, featured navigation buttons, and came with a wedge-shaped design for easier holding. Additionally, it had a speaker and a headphone socket along with expandable SD storage. It also had a second display with a scrollable wheel to make navigation easier. All of this came with 90,000 books included in the Kindle, available to purchase and download. With the kind of support and overwhelming response the Kindle got, this device has seen many upgraded and evolved versions with the latest one released in 2019. Perhaps, this is a true testament to the fact that Kindle popularised digital reading. While Kindle did not introduce the idea of digital reading, it made it so comfortable and easy that users found the experience equally appealing as reading on paper. Besides this, Amazon’s Kindle also brought forward the idea of self-publishing books, a concept that has democratised publishing and depicts the true spirit of technology - giving people more choice and control (to authors) as well as options (to readers).

The idea for the world wide web officially surfaced on the 12th of November, 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the world wide web, submitted a proposal for a hypertext project. This was termed “WorldWideWeb” (W3). At this point, Berners-Lee was working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and this project was meant for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and other institutes around the world. Almost three months after this proposal, he introduced the first web browser and an additional three months later, the world’s first web server went online. The world wide web had been launched. In his proposal, Berners-Lee described his vision of providing a common and single user interface through which stored information could be accessed. To enable this, he expounded on the implementation of a simple scheme whereby several servers loaded with information and already available at CERN were to be used. The project was divided into two phases: the first phase was to use hardware and software to develop browsers for workstations from where information could be accessed; in the second phase, users could extend this application by adding their own material and information. The idea for the world wide web was simple: merge existing and evolving technologies, data networks, and hypertext into a global information system. The impact of this concept was anything but simple. While hypertext and the internet already existed at this point, Berners-Lee found a way to link one document to another directly. This opened the internet to the general public, not just scientists anymore. Now, anyone could share information and communicate with others. With this, many new avenues sprung up: speedier instant messaging, social networking, blogging, and internet forums. In fact, it would not be wrong to term this the most significant technological breakthrough in recent history.

The world’s most used mobile operating system, Android, was launched on the 5th of November, 2007, with the release of the Android beta version. It is primarily an operating system for cellular phones and tablet computers. The idea behind Android began as early as 2003 when Android Inc., an American technology company, started working to develop an operating system for a digital camera. However, the plan soon changed to an operating system for a smartphone. In 2005, Google bought Android Inc. and, for a certain project, decided to base the new operating system on an open-source one - Linux. Then Google introduced Android to the world and in order to promote it as a free open-source software, it created a consortium of multiple technology and telecommunication companies. This association was called the Open Handset Alliance. After a little more than a year, the first Android phone arrived: the T-Mobile G1. When Android was launched, critics were sceptical of its success. After all, Apple had entered the smartphone market a year earlier, Symbian was about to do so, Microsoft was going to launch Microsoft Phone, and BlackBerry was already ruling the place. But today, around 75% of mobile devices use Android as their operating system. What is, then, so revolutionizing about this os? With a diverse range of peripheral and wearable third-party devices, Android has a very large ecosystem. Not only does this create ease in the transfer of data but while syncing it as well. In addition to this, there is high customisability. Furthermore, because Google included its services in the software, manufacturers had to do less work to create smartphones and hence preferred this system. As such, Android phones come in a wide variety of prices - nearly every segment that phones come in, from extremely affordable to high-end. These reasons and more led to Android becoming the dominant mobile operating system in the world 10 years ago. To this day, it holds this title.

On the 23rd of October, 2001, Apple Inc. started its line of portable media players with the release of the iPod. With its tagline of “1,000 songs in your pocket”, this device came with a 2-inch 160x128 pixel screen, included a state-of-the-art 5 GB hard drive, used a scroll wheel for user interface, and had a battery life of 10 hours. Initially, the iPod was released for the Macintosh platform but in the next year, the company introduced a version for the Windows operating system as well. On brand with Apple’s minimalist and user-friendly style, 400,000 units of this sleek device were sold in 2002, accounting for 2% of the company’s revenue. By 2004, Apple was generating around 15% of its annual revenue from iPods. Not only did this product transform the business landscape of the company but to this day, the iPod is considered one of the most revolutionary tech gadgets of the 2000s. The later releases in this product line introduced features such as higher storage capacity, touchscreen interface, additional case colours, smaller sizes, greater battery life, as well as game and video playback facility. Most of the iPods were a huge success and this product line was even once considered the cash cow of Apple. In 2008, 54.83 million iPod units were sold worldwide. However, with the rise of iPhones, a declining trend has been observed in iPod sales globally. In fact, while referring to the original iPhone, Steve Jobs is reported to have joked, “It’s the best iPod we’ve ever made.” After iPhones, there was not any practical need for iPods anymore. With just one product (iPod Touch) in this line still existing today, the iPod now has dwindling relevance in a world dominated by smartphones. However, its significance is undeniable in the sense that it altered the way music was consumed (for instance, the shuffle option affected music sales worldwide) and had a huge impact on the entire ecosystem it operated in (links with iTunes and iCloud).

On 18th October 1958, physicist William Higinbotham developed what is considered the world’s first video game - an invention that would later lead to a $180 billion industry. Called “Tennis for Two'', this was an electronic tennis game with controllers connected to an analogue computer. An oscilloscope served as the screen which could display different curves including the path of the bouncing ball (just a dot). A knob was used to adjust the angle of the ball and a button was pushed to throw it to the other player. While some designs and blueprints were built for this game, the actual time between the conception of the idea and the development of the game was surprisingly very short - nearly two weeks. This was largely because Higinbotham had already done extensive work on displays for radar systems and various other electronic devices. Many wonder today how a nuclear physicist came up with the idea of a video game. While serving as the head of the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s instrumentation group, Higinbotham was tasked with creating an exhibit showcasing the group’s work on the annual visitors’ day. The existing exhibits, unfortunately - or fortunately in this case - were unable to capture the audience’s interest or excitement. Hence, he decided to create an engaging demonstration that would make the event more lively and interactive. This decision turned out to be a huge success with visitors enjoying the game thoroughly and even standing in long queues awaiting their turn to play. Beyond offering an interactive exhibit to the visitors, Higinbotham’s vision entailed showcasing how even complex technological endeavours are relevant to society and that, above all, technology can lead to a lot of fun. Although the heavy use of augmented and virtual reality in today’s video games is a far cry from this game’s basic circuitry of resistors, capacitors, transistors, and relay, the underlying goal virtually remains the same 6 decades later: leveraging technology to offer entertainment.

With more mobile connections than humans in the world today, it is difficult to imagine a time without cell phones. However, it was nearly 4 decades ago, on 13th October, 1983 when the first commercial cell phone was launched by Ameritech, which is now a part of AT&T. While the world of cellular connections has reached 5G technology today, it started with a simple 1G network. Advanced Mobile Phone System or APMS went online in Chicago first where people could make and receive calls. The first call, interestingly, was made by Bob Barnett, the president of Ameritech, who called the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. However, this was not the beginning of cell phone technology. In fact, even the APMS was under development for nearly 15 years and a mobile call was made on a prototype network about a decade before the first commercial cell phone network was launched. This is a large amount of time and is rightly indicative of the complications in achieving this major technological milestone. Hardware, software, and radio frequency issues had to be repeatedly troubleshot. The launch of APMS was a historic moment in the domain of technology: it laid the foundation of what has become a $1.08 trillion industry today and all the advanced features we enjoy in our cell phones. The introduction of 2G allowed text messages to be sent, 3G brought the ability to transmit data over the internet, and 4G was responsible for faster speed. The latest of these advancements, 5G, now offers lower latency and higher bandwidth, even enabling real-time data transmission. Today, cell phone networks are expected to continue to evolve, introducing breakthrough technologies, but there is a high probability that none of this would have been possible had the APMS not introduced its 1G cell phone network commercially.

When Instagram was launched on the 6th of October, 2010, many disregarded it as just another photo-sharing application that would sooner rather than later fizzle out. However, its co-founder Kevin Systrom believed that the visual medium held an untapped market and foresaw immense technological growth in this domain. This proved true when within its first week, 100,000 people were using Instagram and by December 2010, the application had over a million accounts. The platform had such a remarkable upward trajectory that Facebook, threatened by the competition Instagram posed, bought it for $1 billion in 2012, a short while before Instagram’s initial public offering (IPO). Today, Instagram is the world’s largest photo-sharing application. It boasts over 1 billion active monthly users and is the 3rd-most downloaded mobile app. In fact, it’s not even just a photo-sharing app anymore; with full-screen videos, stories, Reels, and in-app shopping, it has established itself as a multi-billion dollar entertainment centre and a major business platform. That being said, the significance of Instagram goes far beyond these astronomical numbers as it has made a huge impact on the world we inhabit, creating and disrupting large industries. 67% of travel enthusiasts use InstagramIt’s important to note here that even nearly 11 years after its inception, Instagram continues to win despite there being many applications that started out with a similar vision. However, what makes Instagram stand out is its constantly evolving model - bringing in new features, removing obstinate options, catering to market trends, and experimenting now and then - which is, arguably, the true essence of technology.

With the introduction of IBM 701, the company’s first electronic computer, the tech giant entered the computer business. The development of this machine for commercial purposes was viewed as a radical move by many considering IBM was the largest supplier of punched card equipment and supplies worldwide at that time. However, 701 proved highly successful for the company with nineteen machines being built - a record volume for a computer of this type back then. This was the first production computer for IBM. While scientific and research reasons were primarily quoted as the motivation for this computer, a major reason this machine was built was to assist the US in the Korean war. It was meant to contribute to the defence calculator which would help the UN in policing Korea. Of the 19 machines developed, most went to research facilities, government agencies, and aircraft companies. Besides this, IBM 701 came with many notable features for a computer at that time. It included electrostatic storage tube memory, had binary, fixed-point, single address hardware, worked with an electronic analytical and control unit, and used magnetic tape to store information. This computer was capable of performing over 16,000 addition or subtraction operations per second, could read 12,500 digits per second from tape, and had the ability to output 400 digits a second from the punched cards. IBM started its computer journey with 701 and reached the highest rank among all computer companies worldwide in 2009. This computer played a pivotal role in IBM’s transition from punched-card machines to electronic computers. That being said, this machine did not just facilitate IBM in dominating the mainframe computer market during the 1960s,1970s, and later decades. It also, and quite importantly, brought electronic computing to the world.

When IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the then best chess player in the world on the 11th of May, 1997, the surprise was widespread. Developed by IEEE senior members Murray Campbell and Feng-hsiung Hsu, Deep Blue was a chess-playing supercomputer by IBM which competed against the best chess player in the world and became the first machine to defeat a reigning chess champion. This machine consisted of 2-meter tall towers, had more than 500 processors, and included 216 accelerator chips. This supercomputer was capable of exploring up to 100 million possible chess moves within a second. The chess master, Garry Kasparov, claimed that the supercomputer could not outperform a human in chess. He was able to beat Deep Blue in the first match but lost in the second and sixth ones. The third, fourth, and fifth matches came to a draw. Kasparov, therefore, lost the game along with $1.1 million. IBM was even accused by Kasparov of building a supercomputer specifically to defeat him after he lost the final match. While many expected the chess champion to display unconventional and unpredictable moves, the swift moves of Deep Blue took everyone by surprise. However, what must be noted here is that programmers had been interested in and working on developing software to play chess since the early 1940s. The victory of Deep Blue was a lot more than a sensational chess match - it was a true test of artificial intelligence and its capabilities. While Kasparov was described as devastated after the historic loss since he left the venue without even speaking to the reporters, the tech community - and the masses in general - could not be happier at the promise artificial intelligence had shown. With renewed confidence in artificial intelligence, Deep Blue inspired developers and programmers worldwide to incorporate this technology in their inventions.

12 years after winning the game show Jeopardy with its software Watson, IBM unveils Watsonx, a new product suite aimed at helping companies develop and deploy artificial intelligence more efficiently. Based on the Red Hat Openshift platform, the solution comprises three main offerings: Watsonx.ai, Watsonx.data, and Watsonx.governance. Watsonx.ai provides access to prepackaged AI models and datasets, allowing users to train generative AI models and neural networks without starting from scratch. It includes models such as fm.code and fm.geospatial, which assist software teams in generating code and performing tasks like biodiversity monitoring and disaster pattern analysis. Watsonx.ai also offers access to open-source neural networks from the Hugging Face platform. Watsonx.data is a data lakehouse where organizations can store the information used to train their AI models. It supports multiple query engines for optimized performance and provides automation features. Watsonx.governance is designed to detect AI biases and model drifts, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations. Alongside the Watsonx suite, the IBM Cloud platform is to provide new compute options with access to Nvidia GPUs, enabling customers to utilize them for AI training and inference tasks. Also introducing IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, a machine learning-powered tool, to help enterprises measure the environmental impact of their technology infrastructure. The suite offers a comprehensive end-to-end AI workflow, empowering businesses to adopt and customize AI for their specific needs. Watsonx also integrates with major IBM software products and establishes partnerships to expand the reach of AI capabilities across its ecosystem with companies like SAP. In 2023, IBM faces strong competition from similar platforms in the market. Microsoft's Azure AI, Amazon's SageMaker and Google's Vertex AI offer comparable solutions to facilitate AI deployment. Also from AI-focused businesses like OpenAI, Cohere and Anthropic who provide state-of-the-art AI offerings. But Watsonx sets a path forward for IBM who will establish a dedicated center of excellence for generative AI to assist enterprises on training, fine-tuning, and deploying AI models, but also address key challenges in AI adoption like security, compliance or transparency.

The introduction of IBM 704 on the 7th of May, 1954, marked a significant milestone in the history of computers as it was the first mass-produced computer in the world that featured indexing and floating-point arithmetic hardware. This was essentially a high-speed, electronic calculator which was controlled by an internally stored programme. A large-scale machine in its size, the 704 had extensive usage. To achieve high-speed computational power and versatility, this machine used stored programmes for every function. IBM 704 came with a magnetic core memory that was far more reliable than the cathode ray tube memories used by its predecessors. The high-speed magnetic core memory was among the most advanced features of 704. This data processing system was a huge commercial success and by the end of the decade, IBM had produced 123 of these machines. The magnetic drum storage was another one of its highlights, a feature that allowed the storage of programmes, intermediate results, and tables, etc. The main purpose of this machine was to solve complex real-life problems in the fields of science, government, and business, just to name a few. For most of the problems, IBM 704 was able to process 40,000 instructions per second. The significance of IBM 704 goes beyond its floating-point arithmetic hardware. This machine paved the road for many technological inventions further down the road and many high-profile tech developments occurred due to it. For instance, the programming languages FORTRAN and LISP were developed for this machine. In addition to this, MUSIC, the first-ever music application, was also meant for IBM 704. Furthermore, speech was also synthesised for the very first time on this mainframe. Thus, IBM 704 left its mark on the computer history not only due to its unique capabilities but also the inventions that it formed the basis for.

With the launch of the iTunes Music Store by Apple on the 28th of April, 2003, the music world was forever altered. A software-based online digital media store operated by Apple, this was Steve Job’s attempt at creating a digital marketplace for music. It allowed users to burn an unlimited number of CDs and put music on an unlimited number of iPods. Customers could find, download, and purchase music for just 99 cents per song, without any subscription fees. With over 70 million songs today and availability in more than 167 countries, iTunes is among the dominant names in the music industry. In the year 2020 alone, Apple music generated a revenue of $4.1 billion (6% of Apple’s total services revenue) with 72 million users subscribed to it. Although iTunes brought many changes to the way music was consumed at that time and consumers were excited about this new development, not everyone was thrilled with the idea. Record labels were disgruntled over losing control of how they priced their songs and many musicians and artists felt that they were not earning enough royalties from the sales of their digital music. Despite this, by 2010, iTunes was the largest music retailer worldwide. Many credit iTunes for revolutionizing the music industry. This was an industry plagued with and highly wary of online piracy and it suddenly had a legitimate avenue to earn money by selling digital music. In addition to this, it eliminated the need to possess physical CDs, and thus, there was no need to travel to get music from a store or a friend. More importantly, with songs priced at 99 cents, a CD costing $18 did not seem an attractive option anymore. Interestingly, iPods - powered by iTunes - became a fashionable trend in themselves.

When Zoom was launched on the 21st of April, 2011, it entered a very competitive video conferencing market. Today, it stands as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the remote work boom due to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. With astonishing statistics such as 300 million daily meetings and 3.3 trillion annual meetings, it is no wonder that Zoom is among the leading video conferencing giants in the world with a market cap of $78.92 billion. Funnily enough, Zoom was indirectly founded out of embarrassment. Eric Yuan, co-founder and CEO of Zoom, used to be the vice president of Cisco-WebEx. A year before he left the company, in feedback by customers, it was revealed that WebEx did not have a single happy customer. This was a huge wake-up call for Yuan who tried to introduce good services to customers. However, he left the company when he did not find success there and started Zoom. The aim was to build a simple but better video communication service. Zoom was a game-changer in the industry because of the ease it offered. All that is required is simply clicking the invitation link, eliminating the need to download software, understand the setup process, and work through the dial-in activities. In addition to this, Zoom was the first cloud-based video architecture in the world. This was to leverage public cloud platforms such as Amazon and Oracle Cloud, in order to scale business. Zoom also highlighted the significance of accessibility as it is available on laptops, Android devices, desktops, iPhones, and iPads. This service also stood out from much of its competition by offering free video hosting. Moreover, along with Zoom’s ease of use and scalability, the customers can have fun by using its filters and backgrounds - something most video conferencing services consider completely unnecessary.

The development of Java, a high-level, object-oriented programming language, began on the 8th of April, 1991. An American technology company named Sun Microsystems started this project, with a team retreating to an unrevealed location to work on the development. It was initially called “Oak” and was later renamed to “Java”, as it is now popularly known. Today, Java is the number one programming language for developers and billions of devices run on this programming language. Java was marketed as a programming language that offered the best universal operating system to the online community. The aim was to make its applications available to all operating systems. This resolved the issues pertaining to translation between Macintoshes, Unix machines, and IBM-compatible computers. Apart from this platform independence, which was a highly celebrated and novel feature at the time, Java also offered object orientation. This essentially means that Java programs are made up of elements called objects. With Java, developers could write code that would run on virtually any machine, irrespective of the architecture or platform. While this may appear to be a simple benefit, it completely transformed the programming landscape. Having extensive usage, Having extensive usage, Java is being used in building Android, web, scientific applications and other software tools. Not only is this language found on desktops, mobile devices, and large-scale industry servers, it is also rapidly gaining credibility in cloud development and Internet of Things (IoT). Many of the popular websites that we regularly visit are powered by Java including YouTube, eBay, LinkedIn, Google, and Amazon. Additionally, Java has a very large and active community - a vital aspect for the survival and growth of any programming language. Decades after its release, Java shows no signs of decline and is constantly evolving by combining stability with innovation.

When Gmail was launched on the 1st of April, 2004, many considered it to be a huge joke by Google. Today, this free email service boasts a user-base of 1.8 billion users worldwide. Written in Java, C++, and JavaScript, Gmail is available in 105 languages. Gmail came with vast storage, a fresh new interface, and instant search, among other existing features. Initially, Gmail was an invite-only service and until 2007, users could sign up only through invites. From the very start, Google strived to set itself apart from its competition. Apart from enjoying high storage, users were able to search through their inboxes at immensely fast speeds. Attachment sizes were also increased to 25MB. What truly made Gmail stand out was the search feature whose capability was far beyond what was offered by even the major webmail services at the time. This was made possible by a serious increase in the storage space - 1 GB for each user - which allowed users to keep all their emails instead of regularly deleting them to stay under the limit. While this figure may not be groundbreaking by today’s standards, back then Hotmail and Yahoo Mail only provided 2 to 4 megabytes of storage. The launch of Gmail was a significant moment in tech history for various reasons. Not only was it the first true landmark service from Google since its search engine, but it also completely overshadowed Hotmail and Yahoo Mail - the two most dominant free webmail services of the time. With its array of advanced features, Gmail was the first major cloud-based application that had the potential to replace conventional personal computing software and not just complement it. Thus, what was naively presumed to be a hoax by many before its launch, turned out to be very real and revolutionary.