Friday, August 30th 2024
AnandTech Shuts Down, an Icon of Tech News and Reviews Rides into the Sunset
AnandTech, a tech publication that practically everyone in the computing industry is aware of, announced that it is shutting down. Named after its founder, Anand Lal Shimpi, AnandTech was founded in 1997 by the then 15-year-old Anand, and went on to become one of the top sources of PC hardware and gaming news and reviews, particularly in the golden age of PC (the 1990s and the 2000s). It is one of the key sites that inspired the founding of TechPowerUp. Anand and his crew have remained our friends and peers throughout this time.
Some of the biggest tectonic shifts in the tech world were parsed through Anand's keyboard. At age 32, Anand left the publication he founded to pursue a job with Apple, handing it to his friend and editor, Ryan Smith, and publisher Purch, which was later acquired by Future PLC. The site would continue to maintain the highest standards of reporting and evaluation for the following decade. AnandTech says that Future PLC will keep the site up and running, so all of its invaluable content remains accessible. We will dearly miss you, AnandTech.
Some of the biggest tectonic shifts in the tech world were parsed through Anand's keyboard. At age 32, Anand left the publication he founded to pursue a job with Apple, handing it to his friend and editor, Ryan Smith, and publisher Purch, which was later acquired by Future PLC. The site would continue to maintain the highest standards of reporting and evaluation for the following decade. AnandTech says that Future PLC will keep the site up and running, so all of its invaluable content remains accessible. We will dearly miss you, AnandTech.
112 Comments on AnandTech Shuts Down, an Icon of Tech News and Reviews Rides into the Sunset
I want this here enclave of the "old web" to continue thriving which is why I help sustain it with monthly contributions. Anyone in this thread who'd be sad if TPU closed up shop, you should consider doing the same!
For me personally, Anandtech shutting down is bad news but bearable. But don't even joke about Blue's News closing, I don't know how I would handle that...
Conveniently, Lunar Lake doesn't appear to be affected.
It was really his analyses plus some hardware reviews that enticed me to visit AnandTech. The review quality stayed high but I don't really need to read every single PSU review. I'm in the market for a new PSU like every five years or so; if I'm not actively shopping for a PSU I pretty much ignore those reviews.
This is a somber lesson for other tech media sites that the content mix is important. It's not realistic to expect every site to cover everything but clearly AnandTech did not publish enough of the content that makes sites viable in 2024.
Anyhow best wishes for the former staff. Hope they find something good.
mashable.com/article/internet-doesnt-last-forever-link-rot-digital-decay
And this isn't specific to tech news sites. I have food recipe PDFs on my computer because I had the foresight to export a copy before some of those sites have shut down. If there's content you like make a copy or accept the very real possibility that someday it may be gone forever.
The Internet Wayback Machine does not capture everything. I've met Brewster Kahle. He's very thoughtful person but he can't do it all.
And there are sites that are still around whose content has drastically changed. You can visit Epicurious.com today, it still serves up pages from the same URL as the Nineties. But the goofy cooking trivia site content from 25 years ago is long gone, replaced by very slick content more appealing to advertisers in the 2020s.
Go visit gawker.com today. Ten years ago it was a heavily visited website.
Sites don't run by themselves for free forever. For better or worse, AnandTech is a holding of a large publishing company which can afford to keep the hardware and software running for now. But there is nothing that makes the publisher immune to market headwinds or poor financial decisions.
TPU isn't an exception, it is not immune to this. Let's hypothetically say that W1zzard ends up taking a different path someday perhaps unexpectedly. Many of us do -- sometimes not by plan. Who is going to pay the colocation bills? Replace failing hardware? Apply security patches to the operating system and web server software? Renew security certificates?
You cannot really the information found in a 15-20 page technical article in even a 1hour YT video.
The whole world is being dumbed down. Anandtech is much like the once huge photo review site dpreview that was closed down then resurrected but now posts a tiny fraction of the articles it used to, especially in-depth tech stories.
But tech channels started to appear on youtube, nowadays there are thousand and thousands of them, not all
of them are good but many are really good tech channels, and they're getting better and better, Don't expect the same
experience as browsing a tech website though.
For a starter check this list: 100 Technology YouTubers in 2024
There are many other good tech channels not in this list.
I'm seeing this in other sites. I scan the headlines from a number of videogame sites and there are 4-5 under one publisher that basically only put out 1-2 articles per week (not including gaming guides).
And there are longstanding news sites that still don't spell check the content of their articles or their headlines. Since trust is earned, how do you think readers should feel?
AnandTech was professional to the end but the lack of enough compelling content was obvious after Cutress's exit. The best and brightest tend to be the ones to leave first (and not just in the tech industry) since they have the best opportunities elsewhere. I was very skeptical of AnandTech's future when he left.
Tis a shame
They are literally attacking AMD for every single excuse they can find or invent, while finding excuses to not do the same with Intel and of course they will NEVER EVER do that with Nvidia.
The last example in a long list of examples by now, that they have changed camps, is their latest article about MI300X
AMD admits its Instinct MI300X AI accelerator still can't quite beat Nvidia's H100 Hopper | TechSpot
Most of the press if not the whole press used a positive title like "MI300X is competitive with H100".
They are the only site I have seen to use a negative title, more so a title that is closer to a troll post from an Nvidia fanboy than a title of a news article.
This is what someone would NEVER EVER expected from Anandtech, even after Anand and Cutress left and that's why Anandtech eventually is going away. Because in my opinion sites today either need a huge user base to sustain them, or corporate money. Anandtech was always in the back of the mind of users in the last 20+ years, even after Anandtech stopped being a site where someone would find frequent new high quality articles. We might have limited our visits to the site or even forgotten it for (short) periods of time, but we where always hopping to see new top quality articles there from new authors.
Tom's Hardware that is mentioned in a number of posts, is the opposite example of Anandtech. In my opinion, an opinion that stands for over 20 years, Tom's was always in bed with the big money and that's why it survived. That's why it will keep surviving as a tech site. That's why it was bought. On the other hand, I think Anandtech was bought from the same publication, because of it's integrity and good name, not it's user traffic. And it was expected that Anandtech will fade away from the day that publication bought it. Everyone was saying back then that "They will shut it down and keep Tom's" or "Oh no, they will make Anandtech biased as Tom's". It's probably surprising it lasted that much.