Digital helped bring about modern networking - and made the Internet possible. But it never really got desktop computing and in the end found itself bought by a PC company with enterprise aspirations. Meanwhile, Microsoft, which had discovered the Web, helped end the reign of Netscape, which got bought up by AOL.

Compaq ends Digital era
It was the end of an era as Compaq, which revolutionized the PC business, snapped up fading DEC, which had revolutionzed the minicomputer market, but which never seemed to get the hang of those newfangled desktop computers.

Is Netscape giveaway genius or desperation?
Imagine trying to give Web browsers away for free.

RBOCs vow 1999 will be DSL's year
Was it?

Plucky Dell plots new server foray
Could it do for servers what it had done for desktops?

Will Netscape fill AOL e-comm bill?
Netscape's free-browser plan didn't work; AOL snapped it up.

Nortel buys Bay Networks for $9.1b

More
Catastrophic failure takes out all 145 of AT&T's frame relay switches

Napster created by Northereastern University student Shawn Fanning.

SBC acquires another BOC, this time Ameritech

Ethern et turns 25