Time travel to the year 2000: these technologies revolutionised the digital world

Kevin Hofer

31/12/2025

Translation: Elicia Payne

2025 has been and gone. Although we've had our fair share of technological evolutions, there's been little in the way of revolutions. With this in mind, instead of looking back over the past year, I’m going back over a quarter of a century.

It’s the year 2000. The world has just survived the Y2K bug more or less unscathed. In the new millennium, there’s a spirit of optimism, especially in the digital realm: the World Wide Web is permeating more and more areas of life. And mobile phones are no longer reserved for business folk. All of this had me wondering: what were the groundbreaking technologies released in the year 2000?

A strong successor: PlayStation 2

On 4 March 2000, PlayStation 2 was released. After selling 160 million units, it became the best-selling console in history. To put this into perspective, the Nintendo Switch only sold just over 140 million.

It wasn’t just a huge technological leap from the PS1. The PS2 was also a DVD player. While classic DVD players cost a fortune, Sony offered both in one device for just 299 dollars. It even had backwards compatibility with PS1 games and legendary exclusives such as God of War, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec and Final Fantasy X.

The PS2 had clear advantages over gaming PCs: you didn’t need to install anything or constantly upgrade it, and it had perfect optimisation. While PC gamers had to upgrade every two years, the PS2 remained relevant for almost ten years. The more compact PS2 Slim arrived in 2004, with new games were still being released in 2014. The biggest disadvantage for many was the fact the console had limited internet capability. You could only play online with a network adapter. This was then integrated into the slim version.

3G: the beginning of mobile internet

Mobile phone internet connectivity was just as limited. Mobile internet as we know it today was still a pipe dream in the year 2000. But on 1 August, the GSM standard was officially adopted by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Projects) (link in German). This was a collaboration between various authorities from Europe, USA and Asia. Their goal? To standardise 3rd generation (3G) mobile radio systems. This laid the foundation for 3G and the mobile internet back in 2000.

In Switzerland, 3G was introduced in 2004. Nowadays, we don’t even think twice about it. Yet, mobile internet only really started being used with the arrival of smartphones.

Camera phones: Sharp J-SH04

At that time, mobile phones had a different focus than smartphones of today. What is now the most important feature of the device was a novelty for many at the time: the integrated camera.

In 2000, Sharp introduced the J-Phone J-SH04, the world’s first real camera phone – with a 0.11 megapixel CMOS camera. The Samsung SCH-V200 had, in fact, been released earlier in the year. However, you could only access your photos via a PC. On Sharp’s, you could send them via a special service.

The story behind it is nothing short of remarkable. Sharp first offered the revolutionary device to Japan’s largest network operator NTT DoCoMo – but it was rejected. The second-largest provider, KDDI, also declined. Nobody believed in the success of a camera phone.

Only J-Phone, the smallest operator, showed interest. But even there, the engineers were the only ones enthusiastic – the marketing team remained sceptical of the small screen and low resolution. J-Phone ordered 10,000 devices – but only 2,000 of them with a camera. The rest were the traditional variant without a camera.

The market spoke loud and clear: the camera version sold out within two weeks, while the models without a camera gathered dust on the shelves. A device that all the big players rejected revolutionised the mobile communications industry forever.

In Switzerland, it took longer for camera phones to catch on. Nokia kicked things off in 2002 with the 7650 (link in German). In 2000, on the other hand, the Nokia 3310, the successor to the legendary 3210, was super popular (article in German). With WAP, it already had painfully slow and, at the time, ridiculously expensive internet access.

Targeted advertising: Google Ads

Speaking of internet, Google proved to have a good sense for it in 2000 and laid the foundations for its commercial success. In October, the company launched a platform under the name Google Adwords that would change online advertising forever. Today, companies around the world use Google Ads to generate traffic, gain leads and increase sales.

Adwords introduced a keyword-based auction system – a completely new approach at the time. Advertisers were able to bid on keywords that matched their products or services. Their ads then appeared next to relevant search results.

The highlight was the pay-per-click model (PPC): companies only paid when users clicked on their ads. This made advertising more targeted and cost-efficient than ever before.

Since its launch, the platform has evolved massively – from simple text ads to a highly complex advertising system with AI-supported optimisation, display networks, video ads and shopping campaigns.

Revolutionary operating system: Windows 2000

In February 2000 Microsoft released Windows 2000 – the successor to Windows NT 4.0. Originally, it was supposed to unite Windows 9x and NT, but the home user version «Neptune» was never released. Instead, there was only the «Professional» edition, which was primarily aimed at companies.

The size of it was gigantic: Windows 2000 was considered the largest commercial software project in history – it cost 2 billion dollars and involved at least 2,000 programmers. Microsoft sold around one million copies in the first month.

So what was new? Active Directory revolutionised network management and was very popular with administrators. Windows 2000 brought real Plug & Play, ACPI power management, USB support and hibernation – for the first time an NT system could be used on laptops. The interface was similar to Windows 98, but offered significantly more stability.

The dilemma? Private users couldn’t afford the high price. Many gamers held onto Windows 98 SE, as games ran better on it. Only Windows XP united both product lines in 2001 – Microsoft released Windows ME as the last DOS system in 2000.

Windows 2000 was the favourite for companies and held on to a 48 per cent market share until 2005. It was characterised by its stability and was ahead of its time.

Storage for the masses: USB sticks

In 2000, Windows 2000 and ME made another gadget socially acceptable that was to become the security nightmare of all IT managers: the USB stick (article in German). The new operating systems had built-in USB mass storage drivers. Previous versions of Windows still required external drivers – usually from floppy disks.

IBM and the Singaporean company Trek launched the first USB sticks on the market. It still remains unclear who the real inventor is. IBM employee Shimon Shmueli had already published a patent in 1999. But the ingredients to do so already existed. Flash memory was available at the end of the 1990s and USB ports on PCs since 1996.

The first sticks with capacities of 8 to 128 megabytes (MB) were available from around 100 francs. The speed: from today’s perspective, a meagre 0.7 MB/s when reading and only 0.4 MB/s when writing. Still, they were much faster than floppies. For comparison: the Lacie Rugged Pro 5 SSD with Thunderbolt 5 today achieves over 6000 MB/s when reading.

In the subsequent years, prices fell drastically and storage capacities increased. Today, there are models with one terabyte for less than 100 francs. Sales figures peaked around 2014, but have been falling steadily since then. More and more people are using cloud storage for personal data.

Did I miss a piece of technology from the year 2000? What was groundbreaking for you back then? Join the discussion in the comments!

Kevin Hofer

Senior Editor

kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.ch

From big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.

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