The Microsoft Slayer – David Boies: "This would've been the second day of the Microsoft antitrust trial. I made that hand gesture as a matter of instinct, really. Daniel Okrent, writing in Time, called it 'shaking the invisible box.' But I remember that what I was trying to do with it here was say, 'Slow down. It's way too early to say where this is going.' Our witnesses during those first days, especially [then Netscape CEO] Jim Barksdale, were very effective. Microsoft was losing a lot of credibility because each day they would come out and proclaim, 'Another great day for Microsoft,' which became a running joke. But this wasn't going to be an easy case. We had to show egregious monopolistic practices and undercut the credibility of their witnesses. I was thinking about what we were going to do when their witnesses came on. That was going to be the challenge of the cross-examination: to get somebody who has every incentive to tell a story that is not helpful to you to reveal the truth."
– Interview by Jeff Howe
Timeline: 1998 10 percent – Amount of all email that's spam. In 2003, as that figure reaches 50 percent, Congress passes the CAN SPAM Act. The 2005 number: 87 percent.
Mar: King of all media: Web users now spend more time surfing the Internet than watching TV.
Apr: Reed Hastings and 234,000 letter carriers challenge Blockbuster with the online video-rental service Netflix.
May: Embrace, extend, and hire a bunch of lawyers: DOJ and 20 state attorneys general charge Microsoft with illegal monopolistic practices.
Sep: The Starr Report, filled with lurid Monica Lewinsky details, is released online, making for what's called the busiest day in Internet history so far.
Yahoo! wannabe Google opens for business in a garage in Menlo Park, California.
Nov: Battered Netscape bows out of browser war, agrees to sell to AOL for $4.2 billion.
Dec: Stock analyst Henry Blodget sets a $400 price target on Amazon shares. A year later, it tops out at $600.
The final 21 unwired countries (from Afghanistan to Western Sahara) come online. The Web is now global.
Boies, Justice Department special prosecutor, on the steps of the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, DC, in October 1998. Getty
10 Years That Changed the World
| Intro
A Decade of Genius and Madness
