Every year, some don’t make it to New Year’s Eve. Tech is like life in that way.
Apps and services that once had so much energy and promise are abandoned to the old folks’ home of dwindling attention before departing entirely. These are the apps and services that were still kicking at the start of 2025 but which are no longer with us.
1. Mozilla Pocket
The Mozilla Foundation is most famous for Firefox, its browser, but until November 12, 2015, it also ran Pocket. This app let you save online articles across a wide range of websites for later reading. It was a boon for procrastinators who didn’t want to leave a hundred tabs open, like a sociopath, in the vague promise of reading them later.
2. Downloading Kindle ebooks
Amazon’s Kindle is the undisputed heavyweight of the ereader (electronic reading tablet) arena, and so, of course, it has its own format for ebooks for Kindles. Back in February, people got a rude lesson in that even if you “own” something digital, it can be restricted or taken away.
Amazon removed the ability for folks to download their purchased ebooks for reading on their non-Kindle devices.
3. The Zelle app
Zelle pointed out that it wasn’t disappearing entirely. You’d be able to send money via Zelle through participating banks, but the standalone app was toast as of April 1. Yes, April Fool’s Day, but it was no joke. I guess if you want to transfer money to somebody via an app, you’re stuck with good, old PayPal or Venmo.
4. Skype
Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for Skype in 2011. It quickly became the premier video conferencing app long before Zoom became shorthand for video calls.
More professional than Apple’s FaceTime, but clunkier than Zoom and even Google Meet, its crown tumbled off when everybody was trapped indoors during the COVID-19 lockdown, and it never regained it. Microsoft shut it down earlier this year.
5. AOL’s dial-up service
I know. It was still active, yes. If ever you felt the need to relive 1997 and hear the ear-splitting screech of a dial-up internet connection, if you picked up the landline phone while your computer was connected, AOL was still active at the start of this year. “Was” as in AOL finally pulled the plug in August. RIP, AOL.
The post RIP to These 5 Pieces of Tech We Lost in 2025 appeared first on VICE.
