As the year comes to a close it's time to take a look back at some of the events that shaped the tech landscape in twenty-fourteen. There were some high profile buyouts this year as Internet giants rush to dominate emerging markets and consolidate established ones – to name a few: WhatsApp, Oculus Rift, Nest Labs, and Mojang all cashed out big time for their creations. Smartwatches and other wearables were perhaps buzzwords of the year, but we've yet to see a clear winner to emerge here.

We also saw a fair share of disruptions, controversies and security disasters with the likes of Apple, Google, Uber, Sony and the NSA – among others – as protagonists. Elsewhere, Microsoft got a new CEO, Bitcoin's value dropped sharply but kept gaining traction as an accepted currency, and more importantly, the battle over net neutrality is heating up in anticipation to the FCC's new rules in 2015.

Read on as we do a brief recount of the most relevant stories of 2014, divided into eleven major categories. We hope you enjoyed our daily dispatch of technology news and analysis as much as we've enjoyed bringing it to you. Keep coming back for more in 2015!

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