10

Time flies. them.es is turning 10 today and in retrospective it’s obvious that the web – our playground – was a different place back then.

Many apps and services that have been vital and alive 10 years ago don’t exist anymore or are just a shadow of themselves – luckily for us WordPress is different, still #1 and even has increased its market share to an all-time peak. Other now high-grossing IT firms didn’t even exist or were in an early founding stage.

Also them.es has evolved to becoming a useful platform offering a nice variety of OpenSource and Premium products that we’re proud of.

Let’s go back in time and see how information technology was like in 2014.

• In 2014 the important milestone of 1 billion websites has been reached.
• SSL certificates were not very common and only available to website owners who could afford paying the quite high fees. Thank you Let’s Encrypt for initiating the disruptive change.
• The buzzword on the street was Web3 (Web 3.0) and everyone started integrating blockchain technology into their products. At the same time the era of crypto-currencies started taking off.
• WordPress released v4.0 with a focus on the WordPress dashboard experience. The CMS still fully relied on the (now called) Classic Editor because the new Gutenberg Editor, introduced in the upcoming v5.0 release, was not even under active development.
• Apple released a new product line, the Apple Watch.
• Google, again ahead of their time, acquired the AI research company DeepMind Technologies. What (technology) are we all talking about in 2024? OpenAI was not even founded, nor was ChatGPT or any other LLM powered chatbot.
• Facebook celebrated it’s 10th anniversary and acquired the messenger app WhatsApp.
• Microsoft acquired Nokia’s mobile phone business and later that year also took over Mojang Studios, the Swedish video game developers behind Minecraft.
• Support for Windows XP ended after 13 years.
• One World Trade Center has been opened in New York City.
• The Wings for Life World Run has been held for the first time.
• The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in Sochi, Russia and the 2014 FIFA World Cup was hosted by Brazil.
• For the first time in history the ESA managed to land a spacecraft on a comet.
• Famous movies released in 2014 include Interstellar, Big Hero 6, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Ex Machina, Lucy, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The Guardians of the Galaxy and John Wick film franchises started and The Hunger Games finally ended with the release of the first of two chapters. With The Battle of the Five Armies the Hobbit trilogy also came to an end.
• Monty Python have performed their final reunion show. And yes, a Monty Python sketch has influenced IT, so mentioning this comedy troupe here is eligible 🙂

How was your life in the last decade? Do you miss the good ol’ days or are you happy how things turned out? Which (virtual) goods and information would you put into your personal time capsule?

Maybe it’s time to lean back, take a deep breath and recap some memories or even dare to look ahead what the future may hold!