CDnow homepage, December 1998; via Wayback Machine.

1998 started promisingly for CDnow, a leading online music retailer — or "e-tailer" as e-commerce sites were sometimes called at the time. "CDnow goes public with a bang," read a CNET headline on February 10, 1998:

"After upping its offering price, CDnow (CDNW) today launched its initial public offering and saw its shares rise nearly 40 percent."

Traffic was growing, too. CNET reported that average daily visits to the CDnow website "grew to about 132,000 in December 1997, up from 12,000 visits recorded during January of 1996." Of course, like many dot-com companies, CDnow was actually making losses every quarter. But sales were increasing, along with page views — so eventually, the thinking went, profits would come too.

CDnow, January 1998; via Wayback Machine.

CDnow's main competitor at the start of 1998 was N2K, which owned the Music Boulevard website. N2K had made its name as David Bowie's tech partner and shared an adventurous spirit with its rock star client. The company wanted be more than a mere CD retailer; it aimed to pioneer new ways to distribute music in the internet era.

Over 1996 and 1997, N2K had tried hard to make online downloads and digital singles commercially viable. But it had been a struggle. As 1998 began, Music Boulevard — which focused almost entirely on CD sales — continued to provide most of N2K's internet distribution revenue.

At this time, early 1998, Amazon was still only selling books. However, in its 1997 annual report the company flagged that it "intends over time to expand its catalog into other information-based products, such as music."

Sure enough, around April 1998 Amazon began testing a new online music section. Suddenly Jeff Bezos became a real threat to CDnow and N2K. Not that you would know it from a book published later that year by CDnow’s founders, twin brothers Jason and Matthew Olim. In the book, entitled "The CDnow Story: Rags to Riches on the Internet," it was N2K and not Amazon that the brothers focused on:

“Our major competitors are Music Boulevard (which is owned by N2K), Tower Records and Blockbuster—and very recently Amazon.com joined the fray.”

CDnow comparing its website favorably to Tower Records; "The CDnow Story".

The Olims were certainly wary of the new entrant, Amazon, which they said was five or six times bigger than their company. But they affected not to be concerned. “Well, we don’t feel threatened,” the brothers wrote defiantly.

However, by the time their self-aggrandising book was published on 1 October 1998 (and no doubt made available for purchase on amazon.com), CDnow’s founders had changed their tune.

Amazon's Expansion

In June 1998, Amazon officially branched out from books and began to sell CDs on its now expanding e-commerce website. As The New York Times reported on June 11, Amazon’s music catalog contained “more than 100,000 CD's, with 225,000 songs to sample using Real Audio.” The article mentioned that CDnow, Music Boulevard and Tower Records “are already far ahead of Amazon.” But given Amazon’s reputation for big spending, there was reason for those companies to be concerned. Amazon was just over a year old as a public company and had huge losses every quarter. But it was growing, fast.

Amazon.com, October 1998 — note the 'Music' tab; via NIST / Version Museum.

The following month, Amazon acquired two non-book companies: Junglee and Planet All. It was, said the Times in another article, “a move indicating that its aspirations extend to selling far more than books over the Internet.” The same report noted that Amazon.com had “grown to be the most successful merchant on the Internet, with 3.1 million customers.”

While the media mostly focused on Amazon’s ongoing competition with US book chain Barnes & Noble, alarm bells were ringing at CDnow and N2K. Both were already losing money, but now their stock prices deflated too. On 22 June 1998, a columnist at Network World wrote that CDnow's stock had "been almost all downhill" since April. Of CDnow's founders, Jason and Matthew Olim, the columnist said: "Not since Milli Vanilli has a music industry duo's fortunes appeared to have fallen so fast."

Custom CDs and My CDnow

CDnow tried hard to differentiate itself from Amazon. In June it acquired a custom-CD company called superSonic BOOM, which let you make a CD from whatever music the company had managed to license. Of course, music selection was the limiting factor. Scanning an alphabetical artist listing from October 1997, it seems it was a mix of unknown artists and old jazz musicians. For example, an act called Chewing on Foil (which sounds like a failed grunge band) was followed on the list by Count Basie And His Orchestra.

CDnow tv advert, 1998; via ArchiveAnnex. Description by LA Times, March 1998: "In a series of four mock documentary commercials, the fictitious roadie Ian Plimsoll is continually amazed by the CDnow online buying service."

Over the following months CDnow went on a marketing blitz, featuring deals with Yahoo, Lycos and Movielink. Most expensively, it signed a three-year $22.5 million deal with MTV — which, among other things, allowed them to be the exclusive online music store for the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards.

Then, in September, it launched My CDnow, which allowed users to customize their shopping experience based on their musical preferences. It was another example of "personalization," a buzzword popularized by the web portals that year.

My CDnow example in September 1998; via Internet Watch.

CDnow talked as big as it spent. In a MarketWatch article in September, Michael Krupit, CDnow's VP of Technology and Creative Services, made the following ill-timed boast:

"You can go to Amazon.com's home page, and get blasted with the Titanic or Clinton videos, which is not necessarily something you want to buy. Or you can come to CDnow, and see the sorts of things that you want to buy. CDnow is no longer one music store; it is 600,000 music stores with each customer having a different experience."

Amazon would soon get wise to personalization — 1998 was when it invented "item-based collaborative filtering," its pioneering product recommendation system — but it didn't even need that to vanquish its e-tailing competition. By the fourth quarter of 1998, the gig was up for CDnow and N2K.

The Fall of CDnow

On October 23, 1998, CDnow and N2K issued a joint press release:

“Following weeks of discussions, online music retailers CDnow Inc. and rival N2K Inc. Friday agreed to merge, creating a company worth $250 million. The union comes only months after Amazon.com Inc. broadened its retail line to include music and as losses continue to widen at both companies.”

CNN Money illustration of CD e-tailer sharemarket trends, October 23, 1998.

It wasn't just in music retail where the big players were starting to win.

In November 1998, AOL acquired Netscape. The web’s first startup had been vanquished in a few short years by the much bigger and richer Microsoft. Netscape’s once pre-eminent web browser had been losing ground to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer every month, because IE had the massive advantage of being pre-installed on the world’s leading PC operating system: Windows. With the writing on the wall, Netscape sold to one of the very few internet companies that could compete with Microsoft’s scale: AOL.

At the same time, upstart portal Excite was scrambling to sell itself, in order to compete at the suddenly super-scaled level of Microsoft and AOL. Excite entered negotiations to sell to its biggest rival, Yahoo, and also held talks with Microsoft. But in January, Excite instead sold to a large cable ISP company called @Home Network. In hindsight, it was the beginning of the end for Excite.

Indeed, the last quarter of 1998 was a key period for the World Wide Web. It was when the power dynamics shifted to favor large, well-funded companies. Expansion was the name of the game, and Amazon had only just begun to broaden its scope.

By May 1999, Amazon had added more tabs, including Video. There would be MANY more tabs to come. Image via NIST.

Post-98 Platform Power

So what happened to CDnow? Well, its "merger" with N2K was finalised in March 1999, with CDnow effectively folding N2K into its business. But the combined entity couldn't recover the lost ground to Amazon, and CDnow eventually sold itself to Bertelsmann Music Group in July 2000. The price BMG paid was down 90% on CDnow’s stock market peak valuation in April 1998.

In a further twist of the knife, by November 2002 Amazon was running CDnow. “Amazon will operate CDNow's Web site and it will ship most of the merchandise from Amazon warehouses,” reported The New York Times that month.

Hmmm, those tabs look familiar... CDnow in February 2004, by which point Amazon was well and truly in charge of the e-commerce market.

So in the space of just over four years, starting in mid-1998, Amazon managed to obliterate all of its rivals in online music retail. This early demonstration of platform power on the Internet was just as brutal, in its way, as Microsoft’s demolition of Netscape in the web browser market over a similar time scale.

Big internet companies would come to control many cultural industries over the coming years, including music. But we saw the beginnings of that shift in 1998, with Microsoft and Amazon the early victors.

AT&T is launching a new Account Lock feature that’s designed to protect wireless users against SIM swapping attacks. The feature, which you can enable from the myAT&T app, prevents unauthorized changes to your account, like phone number transfers, SIM card changes, and updates to billing information.

SIM swapping attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. They occur when a bad actor gets ahold of a victim’s phone number, sometimes with social engineering techniques such as impersonating a victim and asking their carrier for a SIM change, and then intercepting messages and phone calls meant for the victim. This can let an attacker receive two-factor authentication codes that they can use to break into sensitive accounts.

Other carriers, including T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google Fi, already have similar features to prevent against this type of fraud. AT&T began gradually rolling out Account Lock earlier this year.

As noted by AT&T, its new Account Lock feature also blocks device upgrades, along with changes to authorized users and phone numbers. 

You can turn Account Lock on or off at any time by opening the myAT&T app, selecting Services > Mobile Security > Wireless Account Lock, and selecting which accounts you want to lock or unlock.  AT&T will then send the primary account holder an email notifying them of the change, while every active number on the account will receive a text. Only users with primary and secondary access to an AT&T account can use Account Lock.

Laptop Mag is shutting down after nearly 35 years of providing consumers with in-depth information about laptops and other technology. In a staff meeting seen by The Verge, Faisal Alani, the global brand director at Laptop Mag owner Future PLC, said, “After careful consideration and a review of our long-term strategy, we’ve made the decision to close the Laptop Mag business effective today.”

Laptop Mag has evolved many times over the years. It started as a print publication in 1991, when Bedford Communications launched the Laptop Buyers Guide and Handbook. Laptop Mag was later acquired by TechMedia Network (which is now called Purch) in 2011 and transitioned to digital-only content in 2013. Future PLC, the publisher that owns brands like PC Gamer, Tom’s Guide, and TechRadar, acquired Purch — and Laptop Mag along with it.

“We are incredibly grateful for your dedication, talent, and contributions to Laptop Mag, and we are committed to supporting you throughout this transition,” Alani said. Laptop Mag’s shutdown follows the closure of long-running tech site AnandTech, which was also owned by Future PLC. It’s not clear whether Laptop Mag’s archives will be available following the shutdown. Future PLC declined to comment.

An mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine from Moderna was 27 percent more effective at preventing influenza infections than a standard flu shot, the company announced this week.

Moderna noted that the new shot, dubbed mRNA-1010, hit the highest efficacy target that it set for the trial, which included nearly 41,000 people aged 50 and above. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either mRNA-1010 or a standard shot and were then followed for about six months during a flu season.

Compared to the standard shot, the mRNA vaccine had an overall vaccine efficacy that was 26.6 percent higher, and 27.4 percent higher in participants who were aged 65 years or older. Previous trial data showed that mRNA-1010 generated higher immune responses in participants than both regular standard flu shots and high-dose flu shots.

The company noted that the positive results for the new trial come in the wake of one of the worst flu seasons in years. During the 2024–2025 flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 770,000 people in the US were hospitalized for the flu.

"Today's strong Phase 3 efficacy results are a significant milestone in our effort to reduce the burden of influenza in older adults," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. "The severity of this past flu season underscores the need for more effective vaccines. An mRNA-based flu vaccine has the potential advantage to more precisely match circulating strains, support rapid response in a future influenza pandemic, and pave the way for COVID-19 combination vaccines."

Uncertain future

At present, the fate of promising vaccines such as mRNA-1010 is uncertain as the US health department is currently helmed by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Under Kennedy, the health department announced that "all new vaccines" would be required to go through placebo-controlled trials. That means that participants in a trial who are not given the experimental vaccine must be given an inert placebo rather than an already-approved vaccine as a comparative group, as was the case in the new trial with mRNA-1010.

Experts have pointed out that giving a placebo to participants when a safe vaccine already exists against potentially life-threatening infections is unethical, which is why it's not done.

Beyond that, Kennedy has canceled grants awarded to Moderna under the Biden administration to develop mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccines. A health department spokesperson said at the time that the "reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested."

Last week, Kennedy also worked to restrict access to flu vaccines that contain an ethylmercury-containing preservative, despite decades of data indicating their safety.

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Scientists at several federal agencies are losing access to scientific literature published by Springer Nature, which produces the prestigious journal Nature among many other high-profile titles.

That's according to a report Monday by Nature's news team, which is also published by Springer Nature, but is editorially independent.

According to the news outlet, spokespeople for NASA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed that agency scientists would no longer have access to Springer Nature journals. A USDA spokesperson said that it "has cancelled all contracts and subscriptions to Springer Nature. The journal [sic] is exorbitantly expensive and is not a good use of taxpayer funds." A government spending database also shows the Department of Energy (DOE) has dropped contracts with the publisher.

When Nature news first reached out to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which is the top funding agency for biomedical research in the world—it appeared that its access to Nature journals was not on the chopping block. But, hours later, Andrew Nixon, the top spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, said: "All contracts with Springer Nature are terminated or no longer active. Precious taxpayer dollars should be [sic] not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science."

The move comes after HHS Secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on a May 27 podcast that prestigious medical journals are "corrupt."

"We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt," he said. He accused the journals collectively of being a "vessel for pharmaceutical propaganda." He went on to say that "unless these journals change dramatically," the federal government would "stop NIH scientists from publishing there" and create "in-house" journals instead.

Kennedy's criticism largely stems from his belief that modern medicine and mainstream science are part of a global conspiracy to generate pharmaceutical profits. Kennedy is a germ-theory denier who believes people can maintain their health not by relying on evidence-based medicine, such as vaccines, but by clean living and eating—a loose concept called "terrain theory."

Access to top scientific and medical journals is essential for federal scientists to keep up to date with their fields and publicize high-impact results. One NIH employee added to Nature news that it "suppresses our scientific freedom, to pursue information where it is present."

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A decade-spanning political battle between housing developers and defenders of California’s preeminent environmental law likely came to an end this afternoon with only a smattering of “no” votes. 

The forces of housing won. 

With the passage of a state budget-related housing bill, the California Environmental Quality Act will be a non-issue for a decisive swath of urban residential development in California. 

In practice, that means most new apartment buildings will no longer face the open threat of environmental litigation. 

It also means most urban developers will no longer have to study, predict and mitigate the ways that new housing might affect local traffic, air pollution, flora and fauna, noise levels, groundwater quality and objects of historic or archeological significance.

And it means that when housing advocates argue that the state isn’t doing enough to build more homes amid crippling rents and stratospheric prices, they won’t — with a few exceptions — have CEQA to blame anymore.

“Saying ‘no’ to housing in my community will no longer be state sanctioned,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who introduced the CEQA law as a separate bill in March. “This isn’t going to solve all of our housing problems in the state, but it is going to remove the single biggest impediment to building environmentally friendly housing.”

Unlike most environmental laws, which explicitly mandate, monitor or ban certain environmental behavior, CEQA is just a public disclosure requirement. The 54-year-old statute requires state and local governments to study and publicize the likely environmental impact of any decisions they make. That includes the permitting of new housing. 

But for years, the building industry and “Yes in my backyard” activists have identified the law as a key culprit behind California’s housing shortage. That’s because the law allows any individual or group to sue if they argue that a required environmental study isn’t accurate, expansive or detailed enough. Such lawsuits — and even the mere threat of them —add a degree of delay, cost and uncertainty that make it impossible for the state to build its way to affordability, CEQA’s critics argue.

With today’s vote, the Legislature is putting that argument to the test. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spent much of last week cajoling the Legislature to pass the bill as part of his budget package, signed it on Monday evening.

Now the question is whether this monumental political and policy shift will actually result in more homes getting built in California’s cities.

Many of the bill’s backers are optimistic.

“I think when we look back on what hopefully is California finally beginning to confront this housing crisis, this year — 2025 — and this bill will be viewed as a turning point,” said Matt Haney, a Democrat who represents San Francisco in the Assembly where he chairs the housing committee.

On paper, the new law, unlike most that deal with housing approvals and environmental regulation, is actually pretty straightforward.

Urban “infill” housing developments — housing built in and around existing development — are no longer subject to CEQA.

There are some exceptions and qualifiers, but development boosters say they are relatively minor. 

The exemption is “the most significant change to the California Environmental Quality Act’s effect on housing production since CEQA was passed,” said Louis Mirante, a lobbyist for the Bay Area Council, a business coalition that regularly pushes for legislation that makes it easier to build.

The bill is limited to projects under 20 acres, but that cap is only relevant to the biggest multi-block-spanning mega developments.

A certain level of density is required, but it really only precludes using the policy for single-family home construction.

Before any project can move forward, any affiliated tribal government will have to be notified first, but the consultation is put on a short timeline.

In order to qualify for the exemption, a proposed project must also be consistent with local zoning, the regulations that determine what types of buildings can be constructed where. But thanks to another CEQA-chopping bill authored by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener that exempts many changes to zoning rules from CEQA and which is also packed into the budget, that appears less likely to be a real constraint. 

To buy off the ferocious opposition of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, a construction union umbrella group, the bill also includes some higher wage requirements. 

But those rules are not likely to apply to most potential residential development projects. “The lion’s share of housing being built” in California will no longer be governed by CEQA, said Mark Rhoades, a planning and development consultant in Berkeley.

Take a massive five-story apartment building spanning a full city block, said Bill Fulton, a longtime urban planner and professor at UC San Diego. 

“You don’t have to worry about labor and you don’t have to worry about CEQA? That’s a big deal,” he said.

CEQA seachange

What a difference nine years make.

Consider how things went back in 2016 when then-Gov. Jerry Brown tried to ram a CEQA fix for California’s rising housing costs through the state budget process. Brown’s big idea was to “streamline” the housing approval process, allowing developers to make an end-run around the California Environmental Quality Act, so long as they set aside a certain share of units for lower-income residents.

A coalition of construction labor unions, environmental interests and local government groups torched the idea. The proposal didn’t even get a vote.

Nearly a decade later, once again a Democratic governor opted to stuff a CEQA-trimming policy package through the budget process in the name of cheaper housing. 

The measure passed overwhelmingly in both the Senate and Assembly — and this time it didn’t even include an affordability requirement.

Wicks’ proposal is somewhat narrower than the 2016 version, exempting only infill. New suburban-style subdivisions carved from farmland or undeveloped sagebrush will not qualify. 

That infill focus has made it easier for the Democratic-controlled Legislature to swallow such a significant scaling back of California’s signature environmental law. Promoting denser urban development generally means using less land, constructing new housing that uses less energy and setting up new residents to do a lot less driving. 

“When you are building housing in an existing community, that is environmentally beneficial, it is climate friendly, that is not something that should be subjected to potentially endless CEQA challenges and lawsuits,” Wiener said on the Senate floor on Monday just prior to the vote, when the measure passed 28 to 5.

Even so, Wicks’ proposal always looked like a long shot. 

Since Brown’s failed gambit, lawmakers have managed to pass a raft of bills giving housing developers an escape route around CEQA. But those laws have always contained a trade-off. Developers get to skip CEQA, but in exchange they have to pay state-set “prevailing wages” (which typically work out to union-level pay), hire union workers outright, set aside a certain share of units for lower income residents, or some combination of the three. 

These conditions were born of political necessity. A CEQA lawsuit — or even the suggestion of one — makes for a powerful negotiating tool. Organized labor groups, most especially the building trades council, have not been keen to give up that leverage without getting something in return.

As housing developers proved less willing to use the new streamlining laws than those bills’ sponsors and supporters had hoped, many pro-building advocates, academics and commentators began calling for environmental streamlining with no strings attached.

Wicks answered that call earlier this year. Under her proposal, infill developers would be allowed to ignore CEQA, full stop. That marked a major break from recent legislative precedent, and one that seemed a stretch, even with so many Democratic lawmakers carting around copies of Abundance.

The deal that almost wasn’t

Just last week, Wicks’ proposal seemed on the verge of collapse.

A version of the bill introduced last week included what amounted to a minor wage hike for the lowest paid construction workers, who are virtually all non-union. While the state’s carpenters’ union supported it, the trades council emphatically did not — with one of the groups’ associated lobbyists likening it to Jim Crow. The trades objected so strenuously — arguing that it set dangerous precedent and undercut apprenticeship programs — that lawmakers removed the proposed wage change. 

Instead, developers working on projects that are entirely designated to be affordable would now be required to pay prevailing wages in order to take advantage of the new law. 

Developers of any projects over 85 feet tall would be required to hire a certain share of union workers. There are added restrictions for construction in San Francisco specifically.

By the standards of prior housing streamlining bills, those are relatively modest concessions. Most developments over 85 feet use concrete and steel frame construction, which require a higher skilled labor force that is often unionized anyway.

Most entirely income-restricted housing projects make use of public subsidies that require paying union-level wages.

“Affordable housing is forced to play by different rules because the state has decided that if you are receiving public funds a certain wage should be attached to it,” said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, which advocates for affordable housing construction. The addition of a prevailing wage requirement for affordable housing “is a head scratcher,” he said. “But it really is reaffirming existing policy.”

That leaves every other type of housing project: Market rate and mixed-income apartment buildings under seven-or-so stories. For that type of construction, which defines the bulk of urban development in California, CEQA is soon to be entirely optional — no strings attached.

That this is the new trades-endorsed deal has been met with a perplexed kind of glee from some corners of the “yes in my backyard” movement. The new version of the bill “is now *even better,*” UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf marveled on Twitter.

Will it matter?

What will urban housing construction look like in California without CEQA?

There are no shortage of reasons not to build housing in California. Labor costs, even without regulatory requirements, are high. So are interest rates. Tariffs and aggressive immigration enforcement are more recent sources of uncertainty. Developers are always happy to complain about slow permitting, high local fees and inflexible building codes. 

“It’s not the CEQA costs that are holding up housing,” said Rhoades, the Berkeley consultant. 

“I don’t think this is going to make more development happen,” he said of the budget bill. “It’s going to make development that is already happening a little easier.”

Critics of the half-century-old environmental law can and do point to specific projects — housing for students, housing near public transit, affordable housing built upon city-owned parking lots — that have been sued in the name of the environment as examples of “CEQA abuse.”

Under the new laws, such litigation will largely go away in California’s cities.

“The one thing we do know is that CEQA is a time suck,” said Ben Metcalf, managing director of UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation and the former head of the state’s housing agency under Brown. “If you can just get out of that six months, nine months, twelve months of delay, that takes a whole cohort of projects and gets them in the ground sooner. In a state that’s facing a housing crisis, that’s not for nothing.”

But the more important consequence of CEQA, many of its critics regularly argue, has been its chilling effect. 

How many new units of housing would have been built, but for concerns that they might become ensnared in environmental litigation? How many developers, anticipating a possible legal challenge, have preemptively pared back their plans? How many financiers of housing projects pulled out or demanded higher interest rates over such concerns?

California may soon find out.