20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was launched in March 2000 by the Oxford University Press (OUP). Since then, the website has offered a quarterly update of the online dictionary, with around 1,000 new or revised entries each time. In March 2002, two years after this first experience, the Oxford University Press launched Oxford Reference Online (ORO), a comprehensive encyclopedia designed directly for the web, and also available for a subscription fee. Its 60,000 webpages and one million entries could represent the equivalent of 100 print encyclopedias.

March 2000 > Mobipocket, a company specializing in ebooks for PDAs

Mobipocket was founded in March 2000 in Paris, France, by Thierry Brethes and Nathalie Ting, as a company specializing in ebooks for PDAs, with some funding from Vivendi. The Mobipocket format (PRC, based on the OeB format) and the Mobipocket Reader were "universal" and could be used on any PDA, and then on any computer from April 2002. They quickly became global standards for ebooks on mobile devices. In spring 2003, the Mobipocket Reader was available in several languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian) and could also be used on the smartphones of Nokia and Sony Ericsson. 6,000 titles in several languages were available on Mobipocket's website and in partner online bookstores. Bought by Amazon in April 2005, Mobipocket presently operates within the Amazon brand, with a multilingual catalog of 70,000 books in 2008.

April 2000 > The Pocket PC, a PDA launched by Microsoft with the
Microsoft Reader

Microsoft launched its own PDA, the Pocket PC, in April 2000, as well as the Microsoft Reader (free), for people to read books in LIT (from "literature") format on the Pocket PC. In August 2000, the Microsoft Reader was also available for computers, and then for any Windows platform, including for the Tablets PC launched in November 2002. Microsoft was billing publishers and distributors for the use of its DRM technology through the Microsoft DAS Server, with a commission on each sale. Microsoft also partnered with major online bookstores - Barnes & Noble.com in January 2000 and Amazon.com in August 2000 - for them to offer ebooks for the Microsoft Reader in their eBookstores soon to be launched. Barnes & Noble.com opened its eBookstore in August 2000, followed by Amazon in November 2000.

June 2000 > A quote by Jean-Paul, an hypermedia writer

Jean-Paul switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia writer, and began searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions. He wrote in June 2000: "Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (…) Since then I write directly on the screen: I use the print medium only occasionally (…): the text is developing page after page (most of the time), whereas the technique of links allows another relationship to the time and space of imagination. And, for me, it is above all the opportunity to put into practice this reading/writing 'cycle', whereas leafing through a book gives only an idea - which is vague because the book is not conceived for that." (NEF Interview)

July 2000 > 50% non-English-speaking internet users

Non-English-speaking internet users reached 50% in summer 2000. (Users living outside the U.S. reached 50% one year earlier, in summer 1999.) According to Global Reach, a consultancy promoting the localization of websites, non-English-speaking users reached 52.5% in summer 2001, 57% in December 2001, 59.8% in April 2002, 64.4% in September 2003 (including 34.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 29.4% Asians), and 64.2% in March 2004 (including 37.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 33% Asians). This was a turning point for a multilingual internet, although much still needed to be done to offer more websites in languages other than English, as well as more bilingual and plurilingual websites.

July 2000 > Stephen King, a best-selling author and a digital pioneer

In July 2000 began the electronic (self-)publishing of The Plant, an epistolary novel by Stephen King, who was the first author of best- sellers to make such a bet. Stephen King started his digital experiment a little earlier, with the distribution in March 2000 of his short story Riding the Bullet, which was downloaded 400,000 times during the first 24 hours. All this was followed with a lot of interest by the media. Then Stephen King created a website to self-publish his novel The Plant in episodes. The chapters were published at regular intervals and could be downloaded in several formats (PDF, OeB, HTML, TXT). After the publication of the sixth chapter in December 2000, the author decided to step down and stop this experiment, because more and more readers were downloading the chapters without paying for them. Stephen King went on with digital experiments though, but this time in partnership with his publisher.

August 2000 > Barnes & Noble.com opened its eBookStore

Barnes & Noble.com started its eBookStore in August 2000, following a partnership with Microsoft in January 2000 to sell digital books for the Microsoft Reader. Barnes & Noble.com also partnered with Adobe in August 2000 to sell books for the Acrobat Reader and the Glassbook Reader - Adobe had just bought Glassbook, its reader and its digital bookstore.

September 2000 > GDT, the largest bilingual online French-English dictionary

The OQLF (Office Québécois de la Langue Française - Quebecois Office of the French Language) launched in September 2000 the GDT (Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique — Main Terminological Dictionary), a free online bilingual French-English dictionary with 3 million terms related to industry, science and commerce. This online version was a technological challenge, and the result of a partnership between the OQLF, author of the dictionary, and Semantix, a company specializing in linguistic software. During the first month, the GDT counted 1.3 million individual visits, with peaks of 60,000 daily visits. The database was then maintained by Convera Canada, with 3.5 million hits per month in February 2003. A revamped version of the GDT went online in March 2003. The database is presently maintained by the OQLF itself, with the addition of Latin as a third language.

September 2000 > Numilog, a French-language digital bookstore

Numilog was founded in March 2000 by Denis Zwirn in Paris, France, as a company specializing in the distribution of digital books. In September 2000, Numilog launched an online bookstore that became the main French- language aggregator of digital books. In December 2006, the catalog included 35,000 books and audiobooks from 60 publishers, including Gallimard, POL, Le Dilettante, Le Rocher, La Découverte, De Vive Voix, Eyrolles or Pearson Education France. Numilog is now (since May 2008) a subsidiary of Hachette Livre, a leading publishing group. In January 2009, the catalog was offering 100,000 ebooks from 100 publishers, with tailored services for bookstores and libraries.

October 2000 > Distributed Proofreaders, to share the correction of digitized books

Distributed Proofreaders (DP) was founded in 2000 by Charles Franks to support the digitization of public domain books and assist Project Gutenberg in its efforts to offer free electronic versions of literary works. Distributed Proofreaders presently became the main source of Project Gutenberg's ebooks, and an official Project Gutenberg