In Memoriam: All the tech that died in 2025

It’s been a long year, but it’s almost over.

And since January, a lot has happened in the tech world. It’s a fickle, rapid-paced indusattempt, and some major products and services haven’t survived 2025.

Some of the entries on our in memorium list lived long, fruitful lives and contributed lasting legacies to the ever-evolving technology space. (RIP, Skype.) Others were flash-in-the-pan features or straight-up flops (we’re seeing at you, Humane AI Pin), destined to meet an early death. Regardless, they’re all worthy of remembering for the way they impacted our lives — even if that impact was just as a punchline.

Join us as we see back at the year so far and declare goodbye (or good riddance) to the tech that died along the way.

TiVo boxes

Yes, TiVo was still building boxes and yes, the company did kill them off this year. It may feel hard to believe, but TiVO DVRs survived all the way into 2025, long past the product’s heyday.

The company quietly reshiftd the DVRs from its website in October. The company is not dead, however. It has pivoted to being a software company that is mostly utilized by TVs sold in Europe.

Microsoft passwords

Microsoft really didn’t want you applying passwords in 2025. It killed off its password manager in stages, instead migrating its utilizers to passkeys.

A passkey, for the uninitiated, is essentially a more secure way of logging in that combines a password and two-factor authentication into a single step. Often, that involves something like a thumbprint or secure PIN.

“It’s the difference between applying a codeword to open a door and applying a physical key that only you have,” Mashable Tech Editor Timothy Werth explained. “Passkeys are only stored on your devices, not a Microsoft server, and they also eliminate the kind of utilizer errors that result in weak passwords. Plus, password managers are becoming a really popular tarobtain for hackers, so Microsoft is definitely onto something.”

Humane AI Pin

Oh, AI Pin, we hardly knew ye. After less than a year, Humane’s attempt to replace the smartphone with a screenless, AI-powered wearable pin came to an untimely finish. In theory, the concept of an AI assistant that projected a screen on your hand or a surface sounded pretty intriguing. But Humane’s execution of the AI pin was all wrong. From the launchning, reviewers panned the $700 device for myriad reasons, including its faulty projector, finicky response to hand gestures, inaccurate AI responses, and overheating issues. Returns of the AI Pin soon flooded in, and Humane shut down support in February 2025.

Humane may have failed to develop a utilizeful AI wearable, but OpenAI is taking a crack at it. Sam Altman was an investor in Humane, and under his direction, OpenAI announced a partnership with Jony Ive, the iconic designer of the iPhone, in May to create an AI device. That project, however, has reportedly hit delays already — producing a product at scale has proven difficult — and we might not see it until 2027.

Skype

Ubiquitous video calling apps like Zoom and FaceTime owe a debt of gratitude to Skype. Twenty-two years ago, the only way to call someone was through an (often) expensive phone plan. Long-distance calls were an extravagance, only created for special occasions or emergencies.

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Then, along came Skype in 2003, offering free calls between utilizers over the internet. Not only did it disrupt the telecom indusattempt, it created video calling a thing when it added video support in 2006. Eventually, Skype was acquired by Microsoft in 2011, and it lived an increasingly irrelevant existence as other video calling apps from Apple, Google, and the aforementioned Zoom came on the scene. In February, Microsoft announced that it would retire Skype by May and migrate utilizers to its other video platform, Teams.

Forced retirement is a bittersweet finishing. But Skype lived a good, long life, and we’ll always have its legacy.

Pocket

The OG bookmarking app stated goodbye this year. Mozilla, which has owned Pocket since 2017, shut down the read-later platform in July.

Mashable Light Speed

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Pocket launched in 2007 as Read It Later and grew to 30 million utilizers, according to Mozilla. As Mashable’s Matt Binder wrote, the app quickly became a popular service “just as social news and social bookmarking launched to take off.” But according to Mozilla, “the way people utilize the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online requireds.”

Change is hard, but if you want to keep your bookmarking habits, Binder recommfinished a bunch of great Pocket alternatives. Just consider of Pocket every time you hit “save.”

Zelle (kind of)

The Venmo alternative shut down its mobile app in April, but it lives on through your bank. Announced in October 2024, Zelle stated it would phase out the standalone app since it only facilitates around two percent of transactions. Instead, it will focus on its money exmodify service through the many financial institutions it has partnered with.

“Today, the vast majority of people applying Zelle to sfinish money utilize it through their financial institution’s mobile app or online banking experience, and we believe this is the best place for Zelle transactions to occur,” according to the 2024 press release. And now, this plan has gone into effect.

Meta fact-checking program

At the start of President Donald Trump’s second non-consecutive term in office, Mark Zuckerberg launched his MAGA buildover. This launched with finishing Meta’s fact-checking program for being “too politically biased,” according to a video announcement on Facebook. President Trump has accutilized social media sites of censoring right-wing content, and Zuckerberg seemingly finishorsed this viewpoint in killing the program. “What started as a shiftment to be more inclusive has increasingly been utilized to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” stated Zuckerberg in the video.

Instead, Meta has implemented a crowd-sourced community notes approach, like Elon Musk’s X. Meta launched implementing community notes across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in March.

TikTok Creator Marketplace (kind of)

This is another enattempt that’s not so much a true death but a reincarnation, if you will. TikTok shut down its Creator Marketplace, a valuable tool for creators to connect with brands for ad campaigns. Instead, it folded the marketplace into TikTok One, a new platform geared towards advertisers with a whole bunch of generative AI tools.

One of those tools is an AI avatar feature, which lets brands create AI-generated people revealing off their products. How that impacts creators seeing for partnerships remains to be seen. But creators have also proven to be resilient through the looming ban and trade wars.

Mr. Deepfakes

Ding dong, Mr. Deepfakes is dead. We’ll gladly celebrate the shutdown of the notorious site known for hosting nonconsensual deepfake porn. As first spotted by 404 Media, the Mr. Deepfakes URL redirected to a “Shutdown Notice” in early May.

According to the message, the shutdown was forced by a service provider that “has terminated service permanently.” It also stated Mr. Deepfakes “will not be relaunching” and “this domain will eventually expire and we are not responsible for future utilize.”

Just a week before, Congress passed the Take It Down Act, which created posting nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) a federal crime and gives stronger recourse for victims of such content. It’s unclear if the shutdown was related, but regardless, regulators are paying attention to the widespread issue.

Google Assistant

We didn’t quite declare goodbye to Google Assistant in 2025, but we did learn the approximate day of its demise. An official Android Auto support forum revealed it’ll be dropped in March 2026. This is just part of a much wider push from Google — and, to be fair, most tech giants — to integrate AI tools into products. So with that comes no more Google Assistant and, in its place, Gemini, the company’s AI-powered tool.

The ChatGPT-powered teddy bear

Maybe having ChatGPT power a children’s toy was never a good idea, considering chatbots’ propensity to hallucinate, give questionable advice, and delve into subject matter that’s inappropriate for kids.

Toybuildr FoloToy pulled its AI-powered teddy bear called Kumma from shelves in November. The decision followed a troubling report from the consumer watchdog organization Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). That report from PIRG found that the toy gave detailed instructions for lighting a match, talked about sexual kinks, and gave tips for “being a good kisser.”

It feels like an obvious decision not to sell that product to children.

Twitter dot com

Obviously, Twitter was killed off a long time ago, replaced by Elon Musk’s X. But X shiftd to cancel the Twitter domain this year, so much so that folks who utilized a security key had to migrate to X.com instead of remaining tied to Twitter.com. In short: It was a shift to kill off the last vestiges of what was once Twitter. You can still access the social media site by typing, “Twitter.com” but, for all intents and purposes, that website is fully Elon Musk’s X.

We’ve stated goodbye to Twitter a thousand times at this point, but it is well and truly dead at the finish of 2025.

Google Dark Web reports

Google is famous for experimenting with new products and unceremoniously sunsetting them. There’s even a website dedicated to the Google Graveyard called Killed by Google, which includes classic Google fails like Google Glass as well as new casualties.

Most recently, Google decided to shut down its Dark Web Report, which gave Google utilizers a heads-up if any of their personal information ever surfaced on the dark web. This service just launched in 2024, and it could have been a utilizeful, common-sense cybersecurity tool.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

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