Microsoft also stayed in the news with its ,, won’t-this-story-ever-go-away acquisition talks with Yahoo. And Silverlight, Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash (likened by some as the answer to a problem no one had), went Intel-only in 2008, leaving PowerPC Mac owners out in the cold.

Online services

Speaking of Silverlight, Microsoft’s technology also proved crucial to Netflix, the mail-order movie rental service, which made headlines by announcing that Mac users could now using Silverlight.

The Mozilla Group rolled out its newest Web browser, , to many accolades. New features included one-click bookmarks, better performance, better platform-native integration, password management and other security features. crushed Mozilla’s servers for a day.

Twitter wasn’t a 2008 innovation—the social networking service started life in March 2006, an epoch in ‘net time. But the service, in which people communicate in short 140-character-or-fewer bursts—gained critical mass, and has spawned a little ecosystem of third- party developers who have made client software to tap into Twitter, including Mac and iPhone apps.