The tech that died in 2020

Even in a yr like 2020, one factor did not change within the tech world: Sure units, applied sciences, and companies shut down. The causes differ, as does the extent of remorse. Some issues we’ll miss; some issues we by no means cared about; and others, we’re glad to point out the door. This yr, we’re dividing the departed by how a lot we predict most individuals will really care. Take a look at our record under and wave goodbye or good riddance to:

Tech we’ll really miss



Few Flash video games hitting finish of life deserve their very own entry, however few video games have ever seized the general public creativeness like Zynga’s FarmVille. The corporate introduced that as of December 31, 2020, FarmVille would drift off into the sundown with the remainder of the Flash-based world.

FarmVille existed on Fb, and for just a few years the social community felt extra like a car for the sport than anything. Between June and October, 2009, 62 million individuals signed as much as play the sport, as reported by The New York Occasions. On the time that was near one-fifth of Fb’s international person base. FarmVille was big, to not point out addicting. It had every little thing: critics, a Girl Gaga tie-in, enterprise scandals, and one notably horrific story.

With FarmVille you constructed a farm by rising digital crops and livestock. You had freedom to design your farm as you needed. The extra work you place in, the larger and higher your farm grew. You can pace up progress with in-game purchases. 

The addictive half was that FarmVille occurred in actual time, no matter whether or not you had been tending to your homestead. That led to quite a few notifications in the course of the course of the day that your crops had been prepared to reap. A FarmViller delayed at their peril, as they risked ruining all their laborious work.

It was a gaming obsession that we actually haven’t seen since. For anybody who misses the digital residence on the vary, there’s at all times FarmVille 3.

Google Play Music 

googleplaymusic Google

Practically a decade in the past cloud-based music lockers had been the large craze from firms like Amazon, Apple, and Google. However when the mud settles there might be just one (or two, or three). Google determined that 2020 was nearly as good a time as any to cease duplicating its music efforts (because it’s so busy churning out new messaging apps), and made December 2020 the ultimate loss of life date for Google Play Music.

It was a months-long demise for the service as Google inspired its customers to switch to the brand new hotness: YouTube Music. In August, Google blocked new uploads and downloads by means of its Music Supervisor app, and the music retailer was closed. In September, streaming music from the cloud began shutting down across the globe, and by the tip of December all private music collections had been deleted.