Computer history - 2015
Major computer events in 2015
Microsoft released Windows 10 on July 29, 2015.
Google split into two companies on August 10, 2015. The new company known as Alphabet is now responsible for Google, Nest, Google Capital, Google Fiber, Calico, Google X, Sidewalk Labs, and Google Ventures.
2015 computer and technology top terms
The following are some top computer and technology-related terms in alphabetical order that were introduced or popularized during 2015.
New computer products and services introduced in 2015
Sony's PlayStation Now cloud gaming service (formerly Gaikai) was launched in January 2015.
FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) 3.0 was published on March 18, 2015.
Android Auto was released on March 19, 2015.
NEM (New Economic Movement), a cryptocurrency system, was released on March 29, 2015.
ASUS released the first Chromebit on March 31, 2015.
Amazon introduced the Dash Button on March 31, 2015.
Square Inc. introduced the Square Cash service in March 2015.
OnePlus' OxygenOS was released in March 2015.
The cloud computing service Netlify was released on April 7, 2015.
Apple officially released the Apple Watch on April 24, 2015.
Amazon officially released the Amazon Echo to the public in June.
Blizzard released the battle arena game Heroes of the Storm on June 2, 2015.
Apple introduced macOS X 10.11, code-named El Capitan, at the WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) on June 8, 2015. The operating system was made available to everyone on September 30, 2015.
3D XPoint was introduced in July 2015.
Affinity Photo was released on July 9, 2015 by Serif.
The CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) was announced by the Linux Foundation on July 21, 2015
Ethereum, a cryptocurrency platform, was released on July 30, 2015.
Google introduced Android Pay for all Android-based smartphones on September 11, 2015. The service would later become Google Wallet.
The Apple iPhone 6s was released on September 25, 2015.
Samsung released Samsung Pay for its smartphones on September 28, 2015.
Android version 6.0 (Marshmallow) was released on October 5, 2015.
Microsoft released the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book on October 26, 2015.
YouTube Red was released on October 31, 2015.
AMD announced on November 2, 2015, that the Catalyst drivers would now be known as Crimson.
Valve introduced the Steam Machine on November 10, 2015.
YouTube Music was released on November 12, 2015.
Google made TensorFlow open-sourced for public use in November 2015.
After seven years of development, PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) 7.0.0 was released on December 3, 2015.
Microsoft released Word 2016 for Mac was released in 2015.
Adobe released Adobe XD in 2015.
Apple introduced Apple Music, Apple Pencil, and Live Photo in 2015.
BookStack was created in 2015 by Dan Brown.
Google Photos was released by Google in 2015.
Google Cloud Platform Bigtable became available for all customers in 2015.
The final Google Nexus phone, the Nexus 6P, was released in 2015.
Kubernetes was released by Google in 2015.
HEIF (high efficiency image file format) was introduced in 2015.
Hopebot was integrated into the Computer Hope search in 2015.
WebAssembly began being developed in 2015.
PayPal released the PayPal.Me service in 2015.
Amazon Flex was introduced in 2015.
Amazon.com held its first Amazon Prime day in 2015.
Bigtable was made available to the public in May 2015 as an optional component of GCP (Google Cloud Platform).
BandLab was released in 2015.
The Internet browser Brave was released in 2015.
Discord was released in 2015.
GeForce Now cloud gaming provided by NVIDIA on servers equipped with Tesla GPUs, announced in 2015.
Google announced it would be deprecating SPDY in 2015.
Google Fi is a phone carrier service introduced by Google in 2015.
Microsoft introduced Passport in the Windows 10 update in 2015.
NVIDIA Shield was introduced in 2015.
The OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X smartphones were released in 2015.
Samsung released the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, Galaxy Tab S2, and Galaxy Note 5 in 2015.
Google launched YouTube Gaming in 2015.
Dell released the XPS 8900 in 2015.
Computer and technology-related events in 2015
Mozilla released version 1.0.0 alpha of the Rust programming language on January 9, 2015.
Dish Network introduced Sling TV in January 2015.
Ross Ulbricht, the man behind the website Silk Road, was convicted on February 4, 2015.
The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition became the first phone running the Ubuntu operating system to be released on February 11, 2015.
In February 2015, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security advised users to remove Superfish software because it exposes computers to cyber attacks.
Twilio purchased Authy on February 24, 2015.
In March 2015, Facebook released React Native, an open-source JavaScript framework for developing mobile apps on Android and iOS.
HTTP/2 was officially released on May 14, 2015.
A drone from Flirtey made a medical delivery on July 17, 2015, and became the first government-approved drone delivery.
China ended its gaming console ban after 15 years on July 25, 2015.
Starlink, a satellite-based Internet network developed by Elon Musk's aerospace company SpaceX, was first announced in 2015.
In 2015, Swift was open-sourced to encourage community-driven development of the language itself.
Google launched YouTube Gaming in 2015.
Computer companies and organizations founded in 2015
HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) was founded on November 1, 2015, when it was split from the Hewlett-Packard company.
Comma.ai was founded in 2015 by George Hotz.
Essential Products was founded in 2015.
PeopleHum was founded in 2015.
ValiMail was founded in 2015 by Peter Goldstein and Alexander Garcia-Tobar.
Computer company events in 2015
In January 2015, Playtech acquired YoYo Games for $16.4 million, and is now a subsidiary of Playtech.
Sony sold Sony Online Entertainment, the publisher of the MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) EverQuest, on February 2, 2015.
RadioShack filed for bankruptcy on February 6, 2015.
Softcard was then acquired by Google, and by March 31, 2015, Softcard customers were transitioned to Google Wallet.
In March 2015, Silicon Image was acquired by Lattice Semiconductor.
Micro Focus completed its acquisition of Novell on April 6, 2015.
On May 2, 2015, Leo Laporte brought back "The New Screen Savers" on his TWiT network. The show intends to bring back many of the favorite things from "The Screen Savers," which first aired on ZDTV and TechTV.
In May 2015, Broadcom was purchased by Avago Technologies Ltd. for $37 billion. After the purchase, the company was renamed to Broadcom Limited.
Vox Media acquired Recode in May 2015.
On June 23, 2015, Verizon announced it had completed the acquisition of AOL (America Online) for $4.4 billion.
Google discontinued Google Moderator on June 30, 2015.
Bit9 + Carbon Black acquired Objective Logistics in June 2015.
IBM and GlobalFoundries announced on July 1, 2015 that the sell of IBM's semiconductor business and 16,000 of its semiconductor patents was completed.
The Impact Team announced on July 15, 2015, that it had hacked the Ashley Madison site and would release all information about its 35 million users if the site did not shut down. On August 18th and 20th, several gigabytes of user details were released after the site refused to shut down.
On July 18, 2015, eBay spun off PayPal as an independent company.
AT&T completed its acquisition of DirecTV for $49 billion on July 24, 2015.
CSR was acquired by Qualcomm on August 14, 2015, and renamed to Qualcomm Technologies International.
Bit9 + Carbon Black acquired Visitrend, a data analytics company, in August 2015.
In September 2015, Good Technology was acquired by BlackBerry, Ltd. for $425 million.
In September 2015, Amazon discontinued the development and sale of the Amazon Fire Phone.
Alphabet was founded on October 2, 2015, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Dell announced on October 12, 2015, that it had agreed to acquire EMC for approximately $67 billion.
Dot Hill Systems was acquired by Seagate Technology in October 2015.
Tesla announced on October 15, 2015, qualifying Tesla Model S cars would receive the Autopilot update, allowing the Tesla cars to assist the driver.
Jack Dorsey returns to Twitter as CEO.
HP (Hewlett-Packard) announced it would split its company into different companies on November 1, 2015. The company responsible for PC (personal computer) hardware devices, printers, and most consumers would be HP Inc. The other company responsible for servers, software, and other services geared towards business would be known as HP Enterprise.
Blizzard Entertainment announced on November 2, 2015, that it purchased King Digital (makers of Candy Crush) for $5.9 billion.
On December 07, 2015, NXP announced it had completed the merger of Freescale.
On December 9, 2015, Google presented its findings that using D-Wave quantum computers it could solve some problems 100 million times faster than a conventional system.
OpenAI was founded on December 10, 2015.
Ansible was acquired by Red Hat in 2015.
Apache Micro Peripherals went out of business in 2015.
Apple released the iPad Pro, a 12.9" screen tablet, in 2015.
LastPass was purchased by LogMeIn in 2015.
Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Microsoft Edge in 2015.
Mixamo was purchased by Adobe in 2015.
Planar Systems, Inc. became a subsidiary of Leyard Optoelectronic Co. in 2015.
VeriSilicon Holdings Co., Ltd. acquired Vivante Corporation in an all-stock transaction in 2015.
Computer-related TV shows and movies released in 2015
Rise of the Centaur was released in 2015. The documentary covers the Centaur Technology company.
The Bitcoin: The End of Money as We Know It documentary was released in 2015, where Torsten Hoffmann learns more about bitcoin, money, and crypto currencies.
Discontinued products and services in 2015
Google announced it discontinued Google Code on March 12, 2015. Thousands of Google open-source products were moved to GitHub.
On April 30, 2015, all OnLive services were discontinued.
Google shut down Google Helpouts on April 20, 2015.
Friendster officially closed as a social gaming site on June 14, 2015.
Microsoft discontinued anti-malware support MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) for Windows XP on July 14, 2015.
On August 19, 2015, the Microsoft Tag service was discontinued.
Adobe discontinued Adobe Photoshop Touch in 2015.
Microsoft sold the remainder of its Microsoft Surface devices running Windows RT and had no plans on releasing future products using Windows RT.
In 2015, SSL (secure sockets layer) was officially deprecated and replaced by TLS (transport layer security).
On September 30, 2015, Yahoo! Pipes shut down.
All unused Ukash vouchers expired in October 2015.
Windows Phone users had their Zune software transitioned to the Groove Music platform in 2015.
Computer pioneer deaths in 2015
Steve Bristow passed away on February 22, 2015 (Age: 65).
Friedrich Bauer passed away on March 26, 2015 (Age: 90).
Norman Nie passed away on April 2, 2015 (Age: 72).
John Nash passed away on May 23, 2015 (Age: 86).
Hermann Zapf passed away on June 4, 2015 (Age: 96).
Nobuo Mii passed away on July 14, 2015 (Age: 84).
Greg Chesson passed away on June 28, 2015 (Age: Unknown).
Donald Shell passed away on November 2, 2015 (Age: 91).
Gene Amdahl passed away on November 10, 2015 (Age: 92).
Joyce Reynolds passed away on December 28, 2015 (Age: Unknown).