The Ups and Downs of Tech Industry During Pandemic Induced Recession

Every recession in the past and downturn in modern memory has led to the revolution of tech industry incumbents and the rise of new powers. The brutal recession of the early 1980s gave rise to the personal computer era. In the milder recession of the early 1990s, the federal government essentially handed the internet over to the private sector and laid the seeds for the dotcom boom that gave birth to Amazon, while Microsoft pulled off Windows' victory over Apple. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 hit the technology industry much less harshly than the rest of the economy. While the industry didn't experience any major setback, the downturn did propel the rise of social media in the form of Facebook and Twitter.