2000s

The 2000s (pronounced "two-thousands"; shortened to the '00s) was the decade that began on January 1, 2000, and ended on December 31, 2009. During this decade, the world population grew from 6.1 to 6.9 billion people. Approximately 1.35 billion people were born, and 550 million people died. The early part of the decade saw the long-predicted breakthrough of economic giants in Asia, like India and China, which had double-digit growth during nearly the whole decade. These two most populous countries became an increasing economic force. The rapid catching-up of emerging economies with developed countries sparked protectionist tensions during the period and was partly responsible for an increase in energy and food prices at the end of the decade. The economic developments towards the end of the decade were dominated by a worldwide economic downturn, which started with the crisis in housing and credit in the US in 2007 and led to the bankruptcy of major banks and other financial institutions. The outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis sparked the Great Recession, beginning in the United States and affecting most of the industrialized world. The decade saw the rise of the Internet, which grew from covering 7% to 26% of the world population. This contributed to globalization, which allowed faster communication among people around the world; social networking sites arose as a new way for people to stay in touch from distant locations, as long as they had internet access. Myspace was the most popular social networking website until June 2009, when Facebook overtook it in number of American users. Email continued to be popular and began to replace "snail mail" as the primary way of sending messages to people. Google, YouTube, Ask.com and Wikipedia emerged to become among the top 10 most popular websites. Amazon overtook eBay as the most-visited...