July
The furore around Google's plans to digitise the world's books and make them available online developed in July at first US regulators and then Europe announced they were going to investigate.
In contrast to the fractious start to the year, tech companies seemed to be in more cooperative mood this month, with Dell forgoing its traditional Intel monogamy to launch an AMD-based desktop range. Meanwhile Microsoft and Yahoo! finally found some common ground after circling each other for over a year and confirmed a deal on search.
The smartphone market heated-up yet further with the arrival in the UK of of the Palm Pre and the Qualcomm Snapdragon based Toshiba TG01. And the semiconductor market seemed to be on the mend as GlobalFoundries announced its first non-AMD customer and market leader TSMC saw its revenue rebound.
The general sense that the worst of the global economic crisis had already manifested itself was given substance by the news that even the UK retail sector had bottomed out.
