The Year in Tech: 2012 Top Tech Stories

January

Grooveshark sued, Spotify limits free music to 10 hours per month

Reddit prepares for anti-SOPA blackout, others may follow

Microsoft overtakes Yahoo in U.S. search market

ICANN selling custom top-level domains for $185,000

Jerry Yang resigns from all his positions at Yahoo

Roundup: PIPA collapses, SOPA hearing to resume in February

MegaUpload shut down by US government, four execs arrested

MPAA threatens Congress over SOPA, says blackout "abuse of power"

Amazon merchant bribed buyers with refunds in exchange for reviews

February

Facebook finally files long-rumored $5 billion IPO

French courts fines Google for offering free mapping services

You might be a terrorist if you have two cell phones, use Web proxies

Double Fine Kickstarter campaign raises over 700k in one day -- make that 1+ million

Facebook introduces Timeline for Pages

March

U.S. says it can seize any .com domain, regardless of where it is registered

Acer Iconia Tab A510 unveiled, packs Tegra 3 and ICS

Angry Birds Space suma 10 millones de descargas en tres días

April

Arizona legislation will make cyberbullies, Internet trolls criminals

Non-profit ISP start up promises fully encrypted, private Internet

Pew: 20% of adults avoid Internet, smartphones closing digital divide

Google Drive released, offers 5GB free, 25GB for $2.49/mo

May

After five days, Facebook ranks as worst IPO flop of the decade

June

German cable ISP hits 4.7Gbps Internet speeds via existing infrastructure

Internet "Bill of Rights" proposed by anti-SOPA lawmakers

Comcast refuses IP lookups, calls anti-piracy case a 'shake down'

Scientists hit wireless speeds of 2.56Tbps using light vortex beams

Google creates neural network, teaches itself to recognize cats

July

EU Court: digitally-distributed software, games can be resold as used

Google veteran Marissa Mayer named Yahoo CEO

YouTube offers face blurring in one click

YouTube to cut spam by asking you to comment with your real name

August

Steve Wozniak predicts lots of problems for cloud storage

Google expands Knowledge Graph, trials Gmail content in search

Microsoft Xbox 720 developer kit sells for $20,100 on eBay

Ecuadorian government grants Wikileaks' Julian Assange diplomatic asylum

Editorial: Why I Left Facebook After 7 Years, But Was Forced Back In

Infographic: The Internet 10 years later

How ants have used the Internet's TCP algorithms for ages

September

Researchers: Your IP is logged within 3 hours of downloading a torrent

California residents stocking up at Amazon ahead of sales tax deadline

17-year-old eBay unveils new logo to reflect changing marketplace

10-15% of online reviews will be paid for by companies in 2013

Digital Music Index report reveals the top 10 BitTorrent countries

Happy birthday: The emoticon turns 30 years old today

Iran blocks Google due to video controversy, readies own Internet

W3C: HTML 5.0 to be finalized in 2014, HTML 5.1 coming in 2016

October

Best Buy stores to match Amazon's prices through the holidays

The Pirate Bay ditches its servers to become raid-proof

Survey shows first ever decline in Internet usage, but there's a catch

Amazon Web Services outage takes down Reddit, Netflix, Pinterest

November

Gmail finally overtakes Hotmail as world's top email service

Demonoid's tracker flickers to life, website remains dark

Syria pulls the plug, Internet traffic comes to a halt

December

Nielsen Social Media report shows Pinterest grew by leaps and bounds

Yahoo updates e-mail client, revises apps for Android, iOS, Windows 8

Google updates image search algorithm, makes it harder to find porn

Pristine Apple I computer sold for $630,000 to anonymous buyer

Facebook is experimenting with paid messages sent to strangers

Congress cuts amendment banning warrantless email snooping