AnandTech
Few ’90s tech websites apart from Ars Technica are nonetheless working right here in 2024, and in the present day, there’s one fewer. AnandTech, a staple of CPU and GPU information and critiques since 1997, will cease publishing in the present day, based on an announcement from Editor-in-Chief Ryan Smith.
“For higher or worse, we’ve reached the tip of a protracted journey—one which began with a evaluate of an AMD processor, and has ended with the evaluate of an AMD processor,” wrote Smith, referring to critiques of AMD’s K6 and Ryzen 9000-series chips, respectively. “It’s fittingly poetic, however it’s also a testomony to the truth that we’ve spent the final 27 years doing what we love, overlaying the chips which might be the lifeblood of the computing trade.”
The location’s present proprietor, Future PLC, will preserve the AnandTech archives on-line “indefinitely” and can proceed to handle the location’s boards, Smith wrote. A number of AnandTech staffers will proceed to publish articles at Tom’s {Hardware}, one other ’90s classic expertise web site that continues to publish in the present day (AnandTech and Tom’s have each been owned by the identical firm since 2014, although they retained separate websites and branding).
Media headwinds
Smith wasn’t particular about precisely why the location was closing, however he implied that the shutdown was a monetary choice on Future’s half.
“[T]he marketplace for written tech journalism will not be what it as soon as was—nor will it ever be once more,” wrote Smith. “There’s nonetheless extra that I had needed AnandTech to do, however after 21,500 articles, this was a superb begin.”
Ars Technica founder and Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher, aware of the challenges of preserving a late-’90s expertise web site related and worthwhile, largely agreed with Smith’s evaluation.
“The marketplace for tech journalism has modified,” Fisher stated. “Know-how is now totally mainstream when in comparison with the late ’90s. Large Tech advertisers are simply as comfortable now to market their services or products on way of life web sites as they as soon as did totally on tech websites. Moreover, regardless of the trigger (principally ‘development in any respect prices’ pondering), Google not sends the site visitors it as soon as did. That is very true for tech shopping for recommendation (critiques, explainers, and so on.), which AnandTech excelled at offering. Reader tradition has modified, too. In-depth explainers and long-form critiques are expensive to provide however end in ever-dwindling audiences. Google AI Overviews then ‘helpfully’ summarizes your content material, and also you get even much less in return.”
Maybe not coincidentally, a lot of the viewers for in-depth PC part critiques has migrated to Google’s YouTube, the place huge channels like Linus Tech Suggestions and Avid gamers Nexus site visitors in meticulous part critiques that owe a transparent debt to AnandTech’s rigorous methodology and infinite seas of bar charts.
AnandTech’s closure comes just some days after Gannett introduced that it was shutting down Reviewed, one other technology-focused web site based in 1997. Digital camera evaluate web site DPReview, based in 1998, was practically closed down final 12 months, but it surely was saved on the eleventh hour when Amazon was in a position to promote the location to Gear Patrol.
Within the spirit of full disclosure: AnandTech wasn’t my first paid writing gig, but it surely was definitely the primary one in all any word and the primary the place I did any severe evaluate work on {hardware} (just like the very first touchscreen Kindle) and software program (just like the Home windows 8 Client Preview).
Website founder Anand Lal Shimpi started AnandTech as a 14-year-old “armed with little or no precise data” (in his personal phrases), and by December 1999, it had grow to be noteworthy and authoritative sufficient that CNN Cash described it as a “megahot computer-review web site.” Shimpi’s household remained concerned within the web site for years after its founding—after I was freelancing there in 2011 and 2012, the particular person I despatched my invoices to was Anand’s mom.
Though greatest identified for its PC part critiques, the location additionally did in-depth reporting on Arm processors through the early smartphone period, and AnandTech was one of many few retailers publishing in-depth firsthand technical details about early Apple Silicon processors just like the Apple A4, A5, A6, and the 64-bit A7. When Shimpi left AnandTech in 2014, it was to begin a brand new place at Apple.
