AnandTech shuts down after 27 years

By Victoria Song , a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 12 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine.

Hardware enthusiast site AnandTech is shutting down after nearly three decades of covering computers. AnandTech’s final editor-in-chief, Ryan Smith, announced the news in a farewell post this morning, writing, “...Few things last forever, and the market for written tech journalism is not what it once was — nor will it ever be again. So, the time has come for AnandTech to wrap up its work, and let the next generation of tech journalists take their place within the zeitgeist.”

AnandTech was founded in 1997 by Anand Lal Shimpi, who led the site until retiring from journalism in 2014 to work for Apple as part of the team that delivered the M series Apple Silicon chips. Before leaving, Shimpi spoke with The Verge in 2011 about his frustrations with the “cable-TV-ification of the internet” — or online media moving away from high-quality, in-depth analysis toward sensationalism and clickbaity content:

Something I call the cable-TV-ification of the internet. For the past several years it seems as if there has been a trend away from ultimate understanding in content online and towards the tenets of modern mainstream media (sensationalism and the general silliness you see on US cable TV news). The transition isn’t anywhere near complete, but I feel like that’s the direction things are headed. We have to learn from the mistakes of our predecessors, not repeat them with sweeter technology.

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