yearend2016

The new Microsoft under Satya Nadella is still looking good on Wall Street

Almost three years ago, Microsoft named Satya Nadella as its CEO. Since then, Microsoft has reversed its fortunes and returned to being a growth stock after stagnating for nearly a decade — and 2016

TechCrunch’s top 10 hardware startup videos of 2016

We made hundreds of videos in 2016 — and we’re proud of all of them. But some videos, like these, skyrocketed to the top of the video charts making them worth a second look. Featuring go-karts, to

Facebook & Google dominate the list of 2016’s top apps

Mobile applications from Facebook and Google dominated the new list of the year’s top apps released today by Nielsen. Not surprisingly, Facebook again grabbed the number one spot on the list, wi

The top 10 TechCrunch news videos of 2016

Whether they are deeply nostalgic or impossibly cutting edge, there’s some special witches’ brew of hard-to-replicate factors that leads certain videos to take off like rockets. From robots and ex

2016’s top programming trends

Last January I wrote a TechCrunch post predicting the major programming trends of 2016. But in the software development world, things can change very quickly. It can be difficult to see the high-level

40 female founders who crushed it in 2016

The stats are nowhere near where women need or deserve them to be, but when it comes to female founders receiving venture funding, we’re beginning to see a significant shift — maybe even a ki

TechCrunch’s Favorite Things of 2016

We made it! 2016, the year that might go down in history books as “The one where the simulation glitched out a little” is… just about over. We see a lot of stuff at TechCrunch. Lots

Salesforce asserted itself in 2016

Salesforce has always liked to think of itself as an industry irritant, the company that was bucking the status quo and making the established players feel uncomfortable. But this year as the cloud ma

Google hits the reset button

This year, however, it moved it out (and outdoors) to an amphitheater in Mountain View, right next to its campus. Looking back, that move now feels symbolic. In many ways, 2016 was a year of change f

Twitter didn’t fix itself in 2016 and Wall Street isn’t happy

Layoffs, a borked acquisition and continued tepid user growth defined Twitter in 2016. And these are all things that make Twitter’s future uncertain, which we know Wall Street does not like. Jac

AWS catapulted Amazon into a breakout 2016 on Wall Street

You could argue that 2016 was the breakout year for Amazon’s cloud computing service, AWS — and Wall Street knows that an even bigger wave is coming next year. Amazon’s retail business c

Alphabet tried to convince Wall Street it’s not just a search engine this year

Google (or Alphabet, if you prefer) has long been plagued with a problem with its advertising business: while the number of ads people are clicking on has been growing, the value of those ads has bee

Apple’s bulletproof Wall Street growth story came to a halt this year

This year was an interesting one for Apple — but not necessarily in a good way. iPhones aren't selling the way they used to, the Apple Watch isn't a big hit and Alphabet is emerging as a bigger and

Enterprise social comes roaring back

You’ll be forgiven if you missed it, but lost in the avalanche of this year’s tech news, enterprise social software made an impressive comeback. Led by products like Slack, Workplace by F

A look back on tech diversity and inclusion in 2016

The quest to achieve diversity and inclusion in the tech industry is still in full swing. In the past year, we’ve seen some progress made on the D&I front, but not without hiccups along the

Artificial intelligence finds its way into business through sales

Artificial intelligence (AI) had a coming out party of sorts in 2016. Even though it has been in development for decades, this year, with the perfect combination of cheap computing power and access

The Honest Company’s not terrible but not very good 2016

The Honest Company has become a beloved brand in many homes in its five-year history. But the consumer products business has also taken its lumps in 2016. It’s currently fighting civil lawsuits