Top 10 downloads of the past 10 years
By Kelly Green Morrison and Karen Whitehouse, Download.com
When CNET Download.com opened its doors in 1996, it was home to 3,000 small shareware and freeware applications. Online software distribution was still in its infancy. What a difference a near-decade makes! Since 1996, we've watched the rise of instant messaging, digital audio and the MP3 format, file sharing, spyware and antispyware, and the open-source movement, just to name a few. And we've watched as online software distribution has gone from pipe dream to reality. These 10 applications best represent the top trends in downloading over the past decade.
 ICQToday instant messengers are ubiquitous, but when ICQ ("I Seek You") was first released in 1997, it was truly the first of its kind. Though competitors such as Yahoo Instant Messenger and AIM have since encroached on ICQ's territory, this chat client remains enormously popular with international users, and it has remained one of Download.com's most popular applications since its launch. |
 Arriving fast on the heels of the emerging MP3 digital format, Nullsoft's Winamp was one of the darlings of the burgeoning digital audio scene in the late '90s. This free audio player quickly gained popularity, becoming one of the most popular files on Download.com, and Nullsoft was eventually acquired by AOL in 1999. |
 Who doesn't remember this controversial file-sharing kingpin? Developed by Northeastern University student Shawn Fanning, Napster was a groundbreaking application that enabled users to share MP3s painlessly for the first time through a peer-to-peer network. Napster has since been sued, shuttered, and reborn as a subscription music service, but its legacy remains. |
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