Farewell to AnandTech After Over 27 Years

Today, we were going to have a cool hardware review, but something we knew was coming, actually happened, and it feels like we need to make a last minute change. Future Plc has ended Anandtech after 27 years. Head over there to read the last new post by Ryan Smith.

Farewell to AnandTech After Over 27 Years

For those who have only been into computer hardware for the past handful of years, AnandTech was the place to go for in-depth news. For those who do not know, I used to have a site that was almost the same size in 1997. Whereas Anand stayed with it until eventually selling and working at Apple, I went to school and had a managed consulting career before getting back into it. At one point, I ghost-wrote a piece for Anand in exchange for a Tyan Pentium II/ Pentium Pro motherboard back in the late 90s when we were both in high school.

Even though STH focuses more on data center gear like getting Inside a Marvell Teralynx 10 51.2T 64-port 800GbE switches, looking at Intel Xeon 6 6700E CPUs, and buying 1347 used data center SSDs, STH has been larger than AnandTech for many years. That is tough. Large sites like Tom’s Hardware have gotten investment by Future, but it is hard to be a small consumer site in today’s publishing environment.

For those who do not know, Dr. Ian Cutress (formerly AnandTech) introduced Virginia Lee to me many years ago. Virginia effectively handles all of the ad sales on STH, as I wanted to get rid of ever-increasingly intrusive ads. If you are on the desktop STH site, almost every ad at this point is served from this inventory, and I have made rules that I only want static banners. Virginia used to be AnandTech’s ad salesperson many years ago. She was also the one who sat me down and said I needed to be the face of STH like Anand was for AT.

I sent some feelers about buying AnandTech several quarters ago, but I ran into the same challenge that I ran into when I was offered PCPer for effectively nothing after Ryan left. At some point, the property was so much smaller that spending $1000 on STH content went further than on smaller properties. That is similar to what Future has gone through when investing in Toms or AT. For the record, the STH main site is not bigger than AT at its peak, but we are a low single-digit fraction of AT’s peak. Big in a small niche seems to work still. Small in a big (consumer) market is hard.

The publishing industry is rough and not getting easier. I am always wondering if the STH model of targeting one article a day is the right one. The pressure to get relatively huge views on every piece is a more arduous road to walk than just creating tons of content like everyone else. For us, it is also double the pressure with the YouTube side. We shall see.

Final Words

It feels strange to me. STH has only been around for 15 years, and I never imagined STH would outlast AT. Still, on August 30, 2024, we need to take a moment and pause to remember the incredible resource that AnandTech was in the industry for so long.

Thank you to all the folks at AnandTech for all you have done in the industry over the years. Sites like STH would not be what they are without AT.

Again, check out the farewell post that Ryan penned if you have not already.