Microsoft Trial Was Year's Top Story

Dec 23 1998

So what was the top tech story of 1998? Depends where you look, of course, but many outlets touted the Microsoft antitrust trial as the year's big kahuna. It was certainly the topic most covered by the Grok in '98. MSNBC took a readers' poll, and the trial came out on top, followed closely by the Y2K bug, AOL 's deal with Netscape, the wild Internet stock market and the arrival of the $500 personal computer. No. 10 on the list? "HDTV arrives. World Yawns."

ZDNet went one better in the year-ender department, offering separate stories for hardware, software and e-commerce categories, plus a 1998 news timeline and columns on both the editors' and readers' top choices for the year's big stories. Readers and technoscribes agreed that the antitrust suit against Microsoft was the biggest story of the year. But they differed on No. 2 - the editors picked the arrival of online news with the Starr report and John Glenn's space mission racking up big numbers, but the readers picked the arrival of Windows 98 and all the trials and tribulations it brought to their desktops. They both agreed on No. 3 - AOL's big year in the acquisitions department.

Special Report: The Year in News
ZDNet