Top stories of 2020: To say that the year unfolded in unexpected ways would be an epic understatement. The changes caused by the pandemic will impact tech, business and everything else for years to come. And that's just the start.
The influence of Seattle's tech and scientific communities rippled throughout the world in 2020. The region's life sciences institutions played a key role in uncovering and battling COVID-19, and Bill Gates emerged as a leading voice for science and equity in the pandemic. Enterprise tech companies provided the bedrock for a massive global acceleration of digital technologies.
A national reckoning over race, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, brought renewed attention to the tech industry's diversity and inclusion problems, and fueled what will hopefully become lasting momentum to address them.
MacKenzie Scott's bold approach to philanthropy set an example for her fellow billionaires, as she took extraordinary steps to distribute her Amazon wealth.
As if 2020 wasn't eventful enough, the tech industry and U.S. government grappled with an unprecedented cyberattack in the final weeks of the year in the form of the SolarWinds hack, threatening to undermine key institutions and organizations, and prompting an extraordinary response from Microsoft.
All of this has made an afterthought out of what otherwise might have been the top story, the antitrust crackdown on Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple.
🎙️ We reflect on this unprecedented year on the GeekWire Podcast, as viewed through our focus on tech, business and innovation in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Joining John Cook and me for the discussion is guest commentator Ed Lazowska, computer science professor at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
See the bottom of this post for a list of the top 50 most-read stories of the year.
Thanks for reading, reply to this email with comments and feedback, and have a great holiday break. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, editor@geekwire.com.
