Engadget turns 20 years old

This Saturday, March 2, 2024, Engadget turns 20 years old. Originally founded by Peter Rojas — you can read more about those early days here — the site has had eight editors-in-chief and I think seven parent organizations in charge. What started as a really influential tech blog has evolved into a media organization dedicated to reporting news, giving no-BS buying advice and highlighting the stories in tech that matter. We’ve written millions of words, won awards, and somehow survived several media apocalypses. It’s been a journey – and if you’ve been with us since the beginning, we salute you.

To mark the occasion, our team reflected on how the tech industry has changed over the past two decades. At the heart of our anniversary pack is a collection of over a dozen retrospectives of seminal gadgets and apps that didn’t exist 20 years ago, illustrated by the brilliant Root Shadmi.

Engadget, believe it or not, is older than YouTube, the iPhone, Uber, WhatsApp, Android, the Tesla EV, and countless other things that are a huge part of our lives today.

We planned to kick off this holiday month with a letter from the editor, but last Friday Engadget’s parent company laid off several people from our small team, including our Editor-in-Chief Dana Wallman and our Managing Editor Terence O’Brien.

Although the site does not yet have an editor-in-chief, we have a strong leadership team that has collectively worked on the site for decades. There’s no way things will be “business as usual,” but we’re committed to moving Engadget forward.

Although it’s a bittersweet time to celebrate an anniversary, the show must go on. Having edited Dana’s letter before it was published, I want to take the opportunity to pick up on her main talking points, which are more important to the rest of the team than ever before:

• People who love technology are still at the heart of this website. Although our match is smaller, this is no less true than it has been for the last 20 years – you simply cannot get into technology journalism without an interest in technology.

• All the stories you see on Engadget are written by human beings. Like all humans, we sometimes make mistakes. If you see a typo or even an incorrect fact, you can blame the person behind the keyboard, not a robot.

So, happy birthday to us. We kick things off with a look back at how streaming video changed the fabric of the internet. We’ll have many more articles in the coming days and weeks, including a guest post from Tim Stevens, our editor-in-chief from 2011-2013, about the legacy of the Tesla Model S. Stay tuned until March for many more stories and a heavy dose of nostalgia.