Archiveteam did a full site crawl[1] when Anandtech announced they were stopping. You can browse the warc.gz files like a regular web page using https://replayweb.page
Alternatively you could use solrwayback[2] to index and browse the warc files.
You can still bring Wikipedia offline on a laptop (and mobile phone, for some of the larger ones), it is just that you'd need around 100GB instead. There is even a library[0] you can use to do your own wikipedia viewer.
This is not great. Decades of hardware reviews all the way back to the first GPUs becoming less accessible. Why would anyone consider taking it down when there was so much content that could be hosted with little effort while still making some ad revenue? Anandtech articles were still at the top of many Google searches.
Static hosting is essentially free. Add ads and it's a cash machine, not the opposite. Either there's something that they didn't tell us or they're incompetent.
The only thing needed is a staticization of their website, which any CMS they had could very easily be set up to do. Look at the archives of NYT, they're barebone pages that preserve the content without any dynamic areas.
Simultaneously, the fact that anyone with any supposed business experience gifted that priceless level of ranking would decide to shut down the business is insane.
Like, the fact that someone is making money off of MySpace.com right now and Anandtech couldn’t swing it makes zero logical sense. To me it feels like they tried nothing and were all out of ideas.
anandtech.com now redirects to the forums instead its front page of articles. Here is what the website previously tweeted about its future a year ago after winding down operations.[1]
"And while the AnandTech staff is riding off into the sunset, I am happy to report that the site itself won’t be going anywhere for a while. Our publisher, Future PLC, will be keeping the AnandTech website and its many articles live indefinitely. So that all of the content we’ve created over the years remains accessible and citable. Even without new articles to add to the collection, I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long."
> AnandTech will stay online so readers can continue to access articles from our archive, and the forums will remain active to serve our community. Our sister site Tom's Hardware, will also continue to publish all the latest news, reviews and more from the PC world. Thank you all
Future PLC seems to be gradually shutting down all of its activities, one publication or site at a time.
It's a shame because many of them had been publishing for decades. Were they really completely unsustainable? The ads in magazines like Computer Music and Future Music were actually interesting and relevant, unlike typical garbage web ads.
I honestly don't understand why companies do this. There's still SO MUCH traffic from Google for these things.
I've routinely went to AnandTech EXCLUSIVELY from Google. This means that their "news" and new content is of little relevance to me, as it's usually something from a few years prior that I'm reading over there. Yet somehow, "have to publish every day"?!
Part of me thinks that this is related to the inefficiencies of all these CMS, where it costs too much to run the site compared to the revenue from the ads.
Or is there another reason?
Frankly, as an nginx "practitioner", all of these sites could basically be cached and served from a single $50/mo server from Hetzner, Online or OVH. Aren't they're getting far more in ad revenue than that? How does it make any sense to close the shop when you've got such a treasure trove that you could continue milking easily for at least like half a decade?
Chips and Cheese seems like a basically fine replacement for Anandtech. Things change, and the internet has gotten worse since then, but specifically chip benchmarking doesn’t seem too bad.
I think Chips and Cheese is more like a fine replacement for realworldtech.com sans the toxic and highly educational and entertaining forums. Anandtech was much more accessible to the general tech public, but also more commercial and thus hit and miss on the content (no judgement intended, gotta eat).
> I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long.
Archiveteam did a full site crawl[1] when Anandtech announced they were stopping. You can browse the warc.gz files like a regular web page using https://replayweb.page
Alternatively you could use solrwayback[2] to index and browse the warc files.
1: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/202409012...
2: https://github.com/netarchivesuite/solrwayback
Also Kiwix[1] is an excellent app for browsing websites offline. You can use warc2zim[2] to convert the WARC files to ZIM files for use with Kiwix.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the DWDS (digital dictionary of the German language) app is actually Kiwix!
[1]: https://www.kiwix.org/
[2]: https://github.com/openzim/warc2zim
> Kiwix
... I haven't heard this name in 15 years probably. Back then you could bring Wikipedia offline on a laptop, it was only around 20-25 GB.
You can still bring Wikipedia offline on a laptop (and mobile phone, for some of the larger ones), it is just that you'd need around 100GB instead. There is even a library[0] you can use to do your own wikipedia viewer.
[0] https://github.com/openzim/libzim
This is not great. Decades of hardware reviews all the way back to the first GPUs becoming less accessible. Why would anyone consider taking it down when there was so much content that could be hosted with little effort while still making some ad revenue? Anandtech articles were still at the top of many Google searches.
Being near the top of Google means you get an incredible amount of bot and AI traffic which costs a surprisingly large amount of money.
Static hosting is essentially free. Add ads and it's a cash machine, not the opposite. Either there's something that they didn't tell us or they're incompetent.
The only thing needed is a staticization of their website, which any CMS they had could very easily be set up to do. Look at the archives of NYT, they're barebone pages that preserve the content without any dynamic areas.
It is certainly not free at "hundreds of thousands of requests per minute" scale.
Wouldn’t Cloudflare’s free CDN handle that? That kind of traffic is dirt cheap.
I wonder if Anubis or something could have been a viable solution but I'm sure they thought of that
Simultaneously, the fact that anyone with any supposed business experience gifted that priceless level of ranking would decide to shut down the business is insane.
Like, the fact that someone is making money off of MySpace.com right now and Anandtech couldn’t swing it makes zero logical sense. To me it feels like they tried nothing and were all out of ideas.
But that’s private equity for you.
[flagged]
Ok?
anandtech.com now redirects to the forums instead its front page of articles. Here is what the website previously tweeted about its future a year ago after winding down operations.[1]
Originally heard this via https://x.com/System360Cheese/status/1951501044875477254.
The latest indexed frontpage in the Internet Archive is from July 28: https://web.archive.org/web/20250728143805/https://www.anand....
The original farewell article, which is now only readable through the IA: https://web.archive.org/web/20250726035557/https://www.anand.... One paragraph reads:
"And while the AnandTech staff is riding off into the sunset, I am happy to report that the site itself won’t be going anywhere for a while. Our publisher, Future PLC, will be keeping the AnandTech website and its many articles live indefinitely. So that all of the content we’ve created over the years remains accessible and citable. Even without new articles to add to the collection, I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long."
[1]: https://x.com/anandtech/status/1829489697384706555
Future PLC seems to be gradually shutting down all of its activities, one publication or site at a time.
It's a shame because many of them had been publishing for decades. Were they really completely unsustainable? The ads in magazines like Computer Music and Future Music were actually interesting and relevant, unlike typical garbage web ads.
So “indefinitely” turned out to be only 11 months.
Just like lifetime subscriptions and warranties.
"years to come"
Interesting, usually it's the forums of websites that die first, instead of the static content, due to requiring active maintenance and moderation...
Related, I guess:
AnandTech Farewell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41399872 - Aug 2024 (598 comments)
https://web.archive.org/web/20250726001915/https://www.anand...
https://archive.ph/bewtN
I honestly don't understand why companies do this. There's still SO MUCH traffic from Google for these things.
I've routinely went to AnandTech EXCLUSIVELY from Google. This means that their "news" and new content is of little relevance to me, as it's usually something from a few years prior that I'm reading over there. Yet somehow, "have to publish every day"?!
Part of me thinks that this is related to the inefficiencies of all these CMS, where it costs too much to run the site compared to the revenue from the ads.
Or is there another reason?
Frankly, as an nginx "practitioner", all of these sites could basically be cached and served from a single $50/mo server from Hetzner, Online or OVH. Aren't they're getting far more in ad revenue than that? How does it make any sense to close the shop when you've got such a treasure trove that you could continue milking easily for at least like half a decade?
A forum member says that an archive exists:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/anandtech-editorial-ann...
Already got bit by this, remembered an external SSD I opened had a review there and wanted to compare hardware, and wasn't able to get to the review
Just learned they've stopped publishing. Sad! The old web is really dying. Seems like a bug though? They said they'll keep the site up "indefinitely".
Chips and Cheese seems like a basically fine replacement for Anandtech. Things change, and the internet has gotten worse since then, but specifically chip benchmarking doesn’t seem too bad.
I think Chips and Cheese is more like a fine replacement for realworldtech.com sans the toxic and highly educational and entertaining forums. Anandtech was much more accessible to the general tech public, but also more commercial and thus hit and miss on the content (no judgement intended, gotta eat).
Old web died when youtube reviews became more profitable.
It’s sad because I miss printed content like tech magazines.
Indefinitely in the sense of an unknown amount of time (Not infinitely)
From another comment here, they did say:
> I expect that many of the things we’ve written over the past couple of decades will remain relevant for years to come – and remain accessible just as long.
This sucks. Same with cnet, so many spec sheets for old crt monitors gone
Not even techy people can keep a list of simple URL redirects active?
Pretty sure the techy people have left the building
God this is sad :(
did they not provide a copy of the CMS to the Internet Archive??!
People probably already archived it on there themselves.
Big loss for the web.