1996
Netscape Communications releases version 3.0 of the Netscape Navigator web browser (Code-name: Atlas). It will be the first version of the browser to face real competition from another web browser. Specifically, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 3.0, released on August 13, 1996, will rise in popularity to challenge Navigator's market dominance.
1997
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announces the discontinuation of the K5 processor.
1998
Air traffic control over a large portion of the New England region along the Canadian border of the US suffers a thirty-seven minute blackout due to a computer crash at the Boston Center of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). At the time of the failure, some three hundred airplanes are being tracked by the system's seventy-five traffic controllers.
1999
Apple Computer announces that they have filed suit against eMachines, Inc. alleging that the eOne PC illegally cloned the design of the Apple iMac. However, the court will conclude that the similarity ends with the system's translucent blue case, which was the signature of the original iMac G3.
Intel confirms reports that the company plans to exit the market for graphics accelerators. The announcement comes less than a year after the introduction of Intel's first chip, the i740, in February 1998.
2003
The Korean Network Information Center (KRNIC), the organization responsible for Internet resource management in Korea, launches the Hangeul.KR service. The service enables natives to register domains in Hangeul (Korean characters) rather than a western alphabet.
News of the Sobig worm goes public as the worm rapidly spread across the Internet via email, setting a record for the volume of email it sends. The “Sobig.F” is the most virulent variant. It's carried by an email with one of the following subject lines:: “Re: Approved,” “Re: Details,” “Re: Re: My details,” “Re: Thank you!,” “Re: That movie,” “Re: Wicked screensaver,” “Re: Your application,” “Thank you!,” or “Your details.”
Version 1.0 of the SQLite Database Browser, a public domain, open source database client for SQLite files is released. The browser, written in Qt, allows users with no technical expertise to visualize and implement a database without an actual working knowledge of the SQL language.
Version 1.1 of the QiLinux Free operating system is released. QiLinux is a Linux distribution for use on either desktops or servers. Unlike most distributions, it was developed from the ground up rather than based on earlier work.
2004
Google holds its initial public offering (IPO), offering 19,605,052 shares at US $85 per share and raising US $1.67 billion. Of the 19,605,052 shares, 14,142,135 were floated by the company in a bit of mathematical levity (1.4142135 is the square root of two, or “Pythagoras’ constant“). Stock will trade above $300 per share within first year.