Top tech stories of 2015

LOS ANGELES — Apple, Facebook and Google dominated the 2015 tech headlines, along with self-driving car technology, security concerns,  , women in technology and gadgets like the Apple Watch, iPhone 6S, drones and 360-view spherical cameras.

Here's a look at the top tech stories of the year.

— Self-driving cars Musk’s Tesla this year introduced a $2,500 software upgrade in October to bring semi-self-driving to his cars, via no hands on the steering wheel. Google tested its self-driving cars on the roads in Mountain View, Calif., and expanded its tests to Austin.

Traditional automakers including Ford and Audi installed more sensor-based features that take over some of the driving, such as braking. Rumors but no announcement burbled from Apple about its own stealth product.

Auto and car-tech makers are set to descend upon Las Vegas next week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, which will has partially turned into a showcase for new car tech. Many self-driving cars will be on display at the show, even though true autonomous vehicles aren’t expected to become a true reality for another 10 to 15 years.

— Facebook: The world’s largest social network got even bigger, with more than 1.5 billion people tuned in daily and an average 8 billion daily video views, and its Facebook, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp services dominated Nielsen’s year-end chart of the most-used apps It opened up its news feed to video produced by spherical 360 degree cameras and started "Instant Articles" from selected publishers that load up faster than links. Its market cap topped $300 billion. Additionally, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced he would eventually give away his $45 billion fortune, and he increasingly took the world stage on policy issues.

— Google: The world’s No. 1 search engine shocked the industry in the summer by forming a new umbrella company, Alphabet, to oversee the  “moonshot” ambitions of co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and named Sundar Pichai to run its core Google business. Its YouTube subsidiary continued its stranglehold on young audiences and music fans and made a move to take on Netflix in the fall with a new subscription service, Red. Nielsen's year-end rankings showed growth beyond the desktop, with five of the top 10 most used apps. Its stock price rebounded, as investors lapped up the restructuring and expense-tightening moves instituted by a new CFO, as well as its first-ever stock buyback. Late in the year, it made a major push to take on the sizzling cloud storage business that's dominated by Amazon, buying Bepop Technologies, a start-up run by former VMware head Diane Greene.

— Management battles: The micro-blogging service Twitter continued to struggle to grow, but much of the year was spent focused on new leadership. Would co-founder Jack Dorsey get the CEO title? He did in October, notwithstanding concerns about his ability to run two companies at once (he's also CEO of Square, which went public.) At the end of the year, much attention was focused on embattled Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. With investor calls for her ouster, will she be able to hang on in 2016? And what will come of the company that has basically put its core assets like e-mail, search and news coverage up for sale?

— Apple. The world’s largest tech firm introduced more new products than ever before, to a new type of reaction than the folks in Cupertino, Calif., had encountered in decades. “None of them were like `Wow, I’ve got to have it,” says Rich DeMuro, a tech reporter for KTLA-TV in Los Angeles. The heavily hyped Apple Watch launched, but without product in stores for opening weekend. By the end of the year, Apple wouldn’t say how many watches had sold (analysts projected sales of 20 million), and the product was being discounted to $100 off, something rarely seen in Apple devices. The launch of Apple Music, the company's answer to Spotify and Pandora, found many critics saying the new service was hard to navigate, and not as simple as past Apple products. The new iPhone 6S sold well (48 million in its first weeks on sale) but the new features introduced like 3D Touch and Live Photos have yet to dominate the culture, like past Apple iPhone introductions Siri and the iPhone fingerprint log-in. Meanwhile, Wall Street seems to have turned on Apple, with its stock (AAPL) down 17% from its high, and up just 0.8% for the year.

— Women and minorities in tech. What it's like to be a woman, Black or Latino working in technology formed a steady undercurrent of discussion amid new product launches and corporate shake-ups. Ellen Pao lost a gender discrimination lawsuit against former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, but not before the five-week trial provided a public viewing into the male-dominated culture of venture capital. Comments by a former senior engineer at Twitter, who is African American, shone a spotlight on how tech company culture can act at cross purposes to public goals on diversity. And some media organizations threatened to boycott SXSW after the tech and ideas festival cancelled panels on women in gaming. Reports released by major tech companies on their gender and ethnic make-up showed some strides in hiring women, but little progress in hiring underrepresented minorities.

— Mergers and splits: Dell snapped up EMC for $67 billion, Hewlett-Packard split into two companies, Verizon acquired AOL, struggling tech news site Re/Code became part of Vox Media.

— Amazon. The e-tailer dominated holiday shopping more than ever in 2015, with 3 million new subscribers to its Prime offering of faster shipping and home entertainment, made inroads in Hollywood with the critically acclaimed Transparent and Man in High Castle series and seems to be on the way to creating its own delivery service, supplanting UPS. A surge in Amazon shares (AMZN), buoyed by Amazon's fast growth in cloud services, made founder Jeff Bezos the world's fourth-richest man.

— Streaming: The days of DVDs are starting to seem like ancient history, as streaming media — mostly in the form of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu — dominate the living room in a way like never before. Netflix itself has grown to more than 60 million subscribers, with more than 70% of evening Internet usage owned by Netflix and other streaming services, according to market researcher Sandvine. At the Emmys this year, best actor in a comedy went to Jeffrey Tambor from Amazon's Transparent, and best supporting actress went to Uzo Aduba from Netflix’s Orange is the New Black.

— Drones: With sales projections of more than 1 million drones sold in 2015, that means there are potentially more small unmanned aerial vehicles in the air than airplanes. The Federal Aviation Administration decided to deal with it by unveiling new rules in December calling for all consumer drones to be registered by February, or else risk a fine of up to $250,000.

At the CES next week, drones are expected to be one of the hottest, fastest growing categories.

“Look for a new category — drones you can fly in your home,” says Richard Doherty, an analyst with the Envisioneering Group.

Look to 2016’s first tech headlines to come from CES over the weekend, and have a happy new year.

Follow USA TODAY tech columnist Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham, watch the #TalkingTech video series weekly here on USA TODAY and listen to the daily podcast edition on Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes and SoundCloud.